Chapter 2: Exploration

Since, nothing made sense, nothing was working, he couldn't get out of the room he was in, the situation was as bad as it could possibly get. Fubar: fucked up beyond all repair. If he could just ask the Flight Officer, maybe he had a code or a passkey for entrance to the Bridge. Maybe he knew a way to reroute power to this section.

Bower approached Lieutenant Payton's cryopod. The older man was suspended like a frozen slab of meat. There was a monitor display on the outside of the container but Bower couldn't remember the procedure of how to wake another up from cryogenic sleep. Apparently, he needed an override code or maybe a security code. Normally, any code or emergency wake sequence could be easily initiated by computer but since he had no power, there were no computers. Bower sighed irritably. The mask covered most of Payton's face so that Bower couldn't get a good look at him. From what little he could see, he didn't recognize the man.

"Lieutenant!" he yelled as loudly as he could, "Lieutenant Payton!" The cryopods were hermetically sealed and hardy enough to withstand exposure to space travel and atmospheric reentry so there was no chance his cries could be heard to the sleeping masked man within but he screamed anyway. Somehow, yelling made him feel better, "Wake up Goddammit! Lieutenant Payton!"

There was nothing lose for him to try and pry the cryopod door open with. Everything was bolted or welding into place. He futilely drummed the pod door with his fist, "Lieutenant! Lieutenant Payton! Wake the fuck up!"

Solitary confinement. Alone in the silent room, Bower felt like a fish in a bowl.

He gave up and sank with his back to Payton's pod, hands holding his head. Think man! A blur of memories and recollections were fading in and out of his mind's eye but nothing was pertinent or making sense. His gaze ended up drifting towards the ceiling of the room and he noticed a maintenance shaft with the hatch hanging open. What the hell?

Bower was aware that the maintenance passages were vast, dark and twisting. The ship's artificial gravity could get someone mixed up while within confined spaces such as the work tunnels. Plus, he was going to have to be extremely cautious not to get lost.

Bower stood below the dark hatch looking up at it. Why was he hesitating? He didn't really have a choice in the matter. He couldn't sit around not knowing what was going on, without any lights or power. He would climb the fucking walls after a day or two of being trapped alone. It was either risk the tunnels or go mad.

Before he hoisted himself up, Bower searched the cryopod room. He rifled through every drawer, every bin and searched every cabinet. His salvaging paid off. He managed to find a portable communications unit and clipped it to his collar. He also found a handful of blue chem lights, a small flashlight, two bottles of water and a few packets of super snacks.

Bower was now ready for a little exploration of the duct. He distributed the items in the multiple cargo pockets of his dark gray aviation coveralls. He planned to get to another area of the ship and try to raise a response or, if he got lucky, maybe someone would be trying to get a response from him.

Once he had climbed up, Bower left a lit glow stick by the entrance hatch so he could see it in case he had to come back this way. The bright azure glow was a beacon of hope a midst the deep darkness of the maintenance tunnels.

It was a tight fit in the shaft. He had to crawl on his hands and knees. The thick cables, wiring and pipes forced him to squeeze through areas. Thank God he was trim.

Once he had exerted some energy and broke out into a sweat, he decided he was hungry. Bower tore open the thick double foil wrapping of a super snack, tossed it into his mouth, chewed and quickly swallowed it down. The bite-sized morsel tasted horrible, like a chewy unsalted soda cracker coated with vitamins but the enhanced protein, minerals and heavy carbohydrates could keep a person alive as long as he could stomach the shit.

His burp tasted like soda water and he grimaced, eyes watering while trying to focus on the duct system ahead.

The passage he was in was a long shaft that headed towards the main corridor and common areas on this level. He knew this from his limited memory about the layout.

The ship was divided into separate sections not only by function, but by the different teams. Bower's unit was Flight Team Five which was housed near the hanger and the bridge. His team was aviation but mainly focused on maintenance and engineering with the transport vehicles docked within the hanger. There were two separate Flight Teams Four and Six who were more military oriented and their area was close to the training simulators and the hangers for the larger combat vehicles.

Bower was once again baffled by how well he could remember certain things but other seemingly more important memories remained out of the reach of recollection.

There were a few common areas and the main corridors which linked all the sectors of the ship together towards the center and towards the middle decks. If he could get out of this sector and into one of the main passages he had a much better chance of finding out some badly needed info.

The maintenance shaft was dark and cold. It seemed almost alive as it pawed and grasped at Bower with its tangle of cords, twists of piping and shiny conduits that lined the sides of the shaft. His flashlight beam was swallowed by the depth of the passage.

The shaft grew tighter. He had to carefully crawl to get through on his stomach the corridor was so compact. Even though he could still see the glow stick he had planted at the entrance of the tunnel, Bower was unnerved the further he ventured away from it.

Bower would crawl a few yards and then turn to look for the chem light, like some lonely ship in a dark stormy sea searching for a lighthouse beacon. For some reason, doing this made him feel better but he also felt foolish. He wasn't a child afraid of the darkness so what was he doing? Maybe it gave him a sense of being in control. He was baffled by his behavior and he wondered if this uncharacteristic action was somehow linked to his memory loss. He was far enough away from the first glow stick that he would soon leave another to prevent him from getting lost.

As Bower turned back towards the direction he was crawling there was nothing for his hand to grasp as he reached forward. Expecting to feel the cold steel flooring under his palm, he was shocked to find nothing there and for a split second, he seemed to hang in mid-air like some cartoon character. Suddenly he was pitching forward, desperately clawing at anything close to halt his descent.

SHIT!

His insides lurched in a sickening reflex of fear and disbelief. Bower couldn't find anything to grab onto as he scrambled for a hold.

NO!

The flashlight tumbled out of his hand as he flailed to catch himself.

DEAR GOD!

Everything went silent around him as Bower fell frightfully fast. He was tumbling in his fall, but in the darkness could not tell which way he was facing. Something struck his face and instinctively he lashed out at it. His arm and one of his legs were becoming tangled in something thick and snake-like and it tightened abruptly around his limbs as all of the blood rushed to his head. He slowly settled onto a cold hard surface. The floor! He had reached bottom of the shaft and his fall had been broken!

THANK YOU JESUS!

Bower was in a vertical shaft and he was fine because robust insulation of the energy cables had partially entwined him just enough to break the fall and not his bones. He easily dislodged himself from the helpful cables.

Bower felt like he had just won the Lottery.

His celebration was short lived.

The smell hit him like a runaway cart. Oh God what a stench. He covered his nose and wretched. The fumes seemed to pry into his plugged nostrils like insistent fingers and the strength of the odor was making his eyes water. Coughing and choking he picked up the fallen flashlight shining it around and saw the body at his feet.

The corpse was crumpled in a heap. Bower could see that the hapless person had not survived the same fall he had. The body was discolored and swollen with decay. He figured it had been laying there for at least a few days. The neck was terribly broken and twisted. Fighting the horrible stench, he stooped and saw that the name on the uniform was 2nd Lieutenant J. Cooper.