Nora was cold. It wasn't a sensation as much as a knowledge. Her mind moved slowly, unable to connect. Synapses barely firing. The first sensation she had was of her lungs burning and pushing desperately to open. She gasped and her chest lifted suddenly. The breath held for a moment, as if her body, having remembered how to breathe in, was still trying to figure out how to breathe out. Her breath let out slowly.
Now she felt the cold. Deep cold. Immovable cold. But she also felt her body unfreezing, her heart pumping, her blood moving. She opened her eyes and for the first time in 300 years saw the inside of the cryogenic chamber. It had also been the last thing she'd seen, when she had put Khan into his chamber, checked on the status of the other 71, and finally also laid down for a long sleep, with her chamber set to open in 300 years. Three hundred years of travel through space, as fast as any ship could go. Three hundred years away from earth, from the purges, from the trumped up charges of war crimes, of being the scapegoat for the wars the humans had created. Her breathing steadied and she closed her eyes again, letting the system circulate her blood and warm her slowly. She felt tired, an exhaustion that came with being so very cold. She drifted to sleep, a real sleep, the first in 300 years, and drempt of what she would awaken to when she finally left the chamber. Where would the Botany Bay have taken them? What planets would be near? How wonderful it would be to start anew with all that was left of her people, the augments the humans had created and then tried to destroy. Nora closed her eyes and dared to dream.
She woke up again with no sense of time of how long she had slept, hours, days, another 300 years? She felt hungry. She felt good. There was still the lingering feel of cold, as if she'd stepped out into a chilly spring night, but it was a sensation and that felt good. She wiggled her fingers. She moved her head, she blinked, her eyes focused, but all she could see was darkness. It was the first sign something had gone wrong. The Botany Bay should have kept a small light on at all times in case one of the chambers accidentally opened. Or for when hers opened at the proscribed time. There were also the wrong sounds. It was too quiet for a ship going as fast as they were going. She wasn't on the Botany Bay. In that case, where was she? And were the others with her?
She took a deep breath. There was no way of knowing until she stepped out of the tube. But if they were captured there might be guards. To open the tube might bring trouble. But she couldn't stay in there anymore. The systems that supported her in stasis could do nothing to sustain her now she was breathing.
She pushed her lips together and took another cleansing breath, putting off the possible attack for another minute. Tensing and letting her muscles go to ensure they would work. Another breath. It might be fine. Perhaps the light had malfunctioned. Maybe they had crash landed on a planet. It might be okay. The plan might have worked.
She lifted her hands slowly to her shoulders and placed them flat on the top of the chamber. It felt cool against her warmed hands. She held them there for a moment before she gave the top a shove and lifted her head to look around. She didn't sit up immediately in case someone started shooting on sight.
But there was no shooting. Instead it was quiet and dark. She sat up and looked around. Dim emergency lights were on in a large hold, enough to see by. Wherever she was, they weren't expecting many people. Around her, in neat rows, were the other cryo chambers. She did a quick count. Seventy-three including hers. They were all here.
She glanced around, getting a sense of the room. Large. Cameras on the ceiling. Metal. A hold. In space or on a planet? It was clear that they had been picked up by someone, somewhere, and Nora wasn't about to make any assumptions about friend or foe.
She climbed out of the cryo chamber and stood up. Her muscles pulled and stretched with the movement and it felt good. She moved to the next tube over and looked into the frost encrusted glass. Varvara. A Russian augment who had been one of the last to make it to the refuge. She went to another, Anders. A good friend and former lover, he'd been a member of cabinet during Khan's leadership. She looked at others, Ynez, beautiful in sleep, Niall, his dark skin ashy in the ice. She ran her fingers along the buttons, the control panel that would start the unfreezing process, but she didn't push them. She didn't know where she was or who had her. Clearly they had no intent on killing them or they would have done so. One of them awakening would not seem too much of a threat. Awakening more might set off fear in those who held them and fear led to hatred and hatred led to death. Learn first and then awaken them when she knew they would be safe. But she couldn't help sliding the tips of her fingers along each keypad, feeling the edges of the screen and the soft grittiness of years of dust that clung there.
There was a clunk of metal and a snap of a heavy bolt. Nora turned to face the door. There were cameras and that meant someone was watching. So the opening of the door was no surprise. It was time to face the ones who held them.
A breeze floated in with the opening of the door and the air smelled sweet with springtime. Nora looked at the silhouettes of the two people in the door, backlit by the outdoors so she could not see details. But they were people, standing exactly as humanoids to, feet flat to the ground in boots, legs straight down from hips, curve in the upper length of the backbone leading to the head. Humans? Or perhaps others? She would need to get closer to find out. But there was one thing for certain. In the hand of each person was a gun. She didn't recognize the type by the silhouette, but there was no mistaking an automatic phaser held in shooting position. Some things seemed to never change. Precaution? Or true violence? Either way, not a good sign.
She stepped towards them.
"Don't move," barked a heavy male voice. "Stay right where you are."
She held up her hands in concession. "I've only been awake for 5 minutes and you are already here with guns." Her voice sounded hoarse and rusty from disuse. She stepped forward again, keeping her hands up.
"I mean it. Don't move or I will shoot you," declared the man.
She stood still, hands up. The men shuffled forward, guns up and pointed at her. They circled, one coming from each side of her. Humans. Once again she was at the mercy of humans.
She assessed them. Both men were right handed. Both young, but clearly trained and probably had some battle experience. She couldn't underestimate them when she still wasn't sure what shape her body was in. Maybe she could divert.
"Why are you arresting me?" she asked.
"Get on your knees," said one, the only who had talked.
Diverting didn't seem to be working. Time to know how far they would go if pushed. "And if I don't?"
"I'll use this baby on you. My sister was killed in when that ship crashed. Her and hundreds of others. Don't think I don't want to take that out on one of you."
She barely nodded, as if more a signal to herself than to either man. She slowly lowered herself down onto her knees. The talking man nodded at the silent man and the silent man lowered his gun and pulled out thick shackles.
"Careful," said the talking man. "They said the last one was like a super man. Took 7 shots to stun him."
Last one. Someone had awoken before. Who? And what happened? All the cryo tubes were there, so they put him back to sleep? Or was one tube empty? Her chest caught at the idea of an empty tube, another dead friend—no, another dead member of her family. The only family she had left after the purges.
"Where am I?" she asked. They didn't answer.
"Is this a ship? Are we on a planet?" Again, neither man answered. The talking man just kept his gun trained on her chest and the silent man moved slowly towards her, as if approaching a crouching panther.
"Who is in charge? Who do you report to?"
The silent one was near her now. He slung his gun around his shoulder and reached for her hand to shackle behind her. He grasped her wrist with his paper dry hand. The skin of her wrist tingled at his touch, remembering what contact with another being was. She had thought the day she woke up there would be hugging. Celebrating. The touch of friends, the caress of a lover. Instead her first touch was the chapped hand of a soldier ready to capture her again. She closed her eyes and whispered an apology to this man for what she was about to do to him. What she had to do to him.
She clenched his wrist in return and whipped his arm forward and across, pulling him headlong into the ground in front of her. His partner fired the weapon and the shot hit the man's falling body and the silent man's armor sizzled. The phasers were not set to stun, but to kill. If that was how they were going to play it, she could do the same. She rolled forwards, his next shot hitting the cement behind her.
She launched herself at his knees, knocking him backwards. As he fell she pulled his gun arm with one hand while she simultaneously struck his chest with the other. There was the crack of his ribs and the sick pop of his shoulder coming out of joint. The gun dropped from his now useless hand. He cried out and dropped sideways, hitting into a cryo tube and sliding down it. She stood up and in one sharp movement struck the man at the base of his skull. But not hard—or at least not as hard as she'd meant to. She'd pulled the punch, and what would have snapped the man's neck instead just sent him into unconsciousness.
It was a stupid move. He hadn't had any difficulty shooting at her, even killing his friend. She couldn't afford to play nice in a fight to survive. Too late now to rethink it. There were cameras. There would be more of them. They would have more guns and many more expendable bodies. She had no expendable bodies. There was her and 72 precious sleeping people and she wanted every one of them to wake up again.
She leaned over the unconscious man and ripped his communicator off his shoulder. She grabbed his gun off the floor and ran for the door. She'd need to make it past the waves of soldiers first. Then find out where she was and, if she could, what had happened before that the talking man had mentioned. From there she could figure out a plan to get them all out and away.
Again. Get them all out and away again.
If she'd had time she would have screamed, beat walls, cursed the heavens, and whatever dramatic gestures of grief and rage and frustration that came to her. Instead she flipped the gun and pushed the power lock over to stun. It was stupid. Stunned people get up again. They fight again, usually with more fervor and anger than the first time. Her hand stayed on the power lock for a fraction longer than necessary, but she didn't slide it back to kill. Stun it was.
