Chapter 1: 1. Rude Awakening

Malik Rosen’s body fell bonelessly from his stasis pod when the emergency release mechanism triggered. Dressed in a black skinsuit, the pale, dark haired man violently wretched streams of thick cryogel from his open mouth while his twitching fingers clawed ineffectually at the tritanium floor. Again and again his stomach heaved, desperately struggling to clear his clogged airway while he writhed helplessly in the middle of an expanding puddle of viscous fluid.

Awareness didn’t begin to blossom across his senses until he managed to take in a deep, shuddering breath. Wet, rattling coughs followed that first gasp as his trembling limbs jerked beneath the onslaught of cramps clenching long unused muscle tissue. After a second, and more successful, attempt to reacquaint himself with the act of breathing, his eyes started to flutter open.

Red. His world was painted in a dull, angry glow like the light of a dying sun. His thoughts were sluggish, barely operating on more than an instictive level. Yet even with his thoughts moving at a snail's pace, some trained reflex was spurring him onward. He knew what he had to do even if he couldn't fathom why.

Malik’s twitching hands began to push at the floor to lift himself out of the thick puddle of gel that had been spilled from his stasis pod. Without warning, his ears became functional once again with a pop that was more felt than heard. Sound suddenly shattered the silence of his world like a thunderclap rolling across a clear sky. Oscillating between a low grind and a shrill shriek, the rhythmic rise and fall of the alarm managed to pierce his confusion just enough to get his thoughts to coalesce around a single concept.

Danger.

As his vision gradually began to swim into focus, Malik could see other people writhing on the floor of the long sleep chamber. More alarming, he could see at least two of his fellow crew members that were frighteningly still. His deep blue eyes focused on the nearest of the unmoving figures while he clawed his way toward the diagnostic station built into the side of his stasis pod.

“Daniella,” Malik croaked, the rest of his words lost amidst a coughing fit that wracked his entire body. Tears sprang to his eyes, making his blurry vision even less clear as he tugged open the cabinet beneath the pod’s vital signs monitor. He tried to blink away the tears leaking from his eyes while his fumbling hands closed desperately around the only hypospray in the medical cabinet. “You have…to breathe. Daniella. Breathe.”

His voice was growing stronger and his ragged breathing more even as the moments ticked by. His muscles, however, continued to spasm until his shaking hand managed to bring the tip of the hypospray to his neck. The device hissed as he pulled the trigger, barely audible with the blare of a klaxon ricocheting through the chamber.

The effect was immediate. The tight knots of muscle clenched across his toned frame relaxed. A groan slid from his lips as he finally managed to unfurl from the contorted ball of cramped muscle he’d been in since he awoke. For one selfish heartbeat, Malik wanted nothing more than to roll onto his back and catch his breath.

He never let the thought take root.

“Daniella, breathe!” Malik growled insistently as he tried to rise to his feet. He managed one stumbling step before his legs betrayed him, sending him sprawling painfully onto the tritanium floor. His next try proved more effective, letting him cover the distance separating him from the unmoving doctor in two graceless steps. Once he reached Dr. Lisell’s side, he slumped against her pod and threw open her crash cabinet. Armed with the hypospray, he knelt by the woman’s side and pressed the tip against her slender, olive toned, neck. After pulling the trigger, he tossed the device to the side and planted the heel of his hand against her chest.

“Breathe, Danny,” he demanded, gathering himself for a split second before his tired arms flexed to begin administering chest compression. “C’mon, Doc. Breathe.”

Her skinsuit was slick with cryogel so he had to carefully reposition his hands each time his shoulders flexed. As he tried to push the fluid from her airway, he chanced a quick glance around the chamber. Beneath the dull red lights set into the low ceiling, he could make out the rest of his crew. All the members of 2nd Journey were now up and moving except for the doctor he was frantically working to resuscitate and the engineer who was curled up in a fetal position by his pod. Unlike the good doctor, Engineer Mullins appeared to be breathing.

As if on cue, the next time his arms flexed, a gout of cryogel gurgled past the woman’s lips. She wheezed and struggled to roll onto her side as her stomach heaved to push the rest of the gel from her clogged airway. Malik immediately began rubbing her back between her shoulders, urging the short haired woman to expel the cryogel onto the dark tritanium floor.

“Good job, Doc,” he said, allowing himself a moment of sheer relief before he sent his gaze flickering up and down the length of the room. Most of the 2nd crew were sitting beside their stasis pods with a spent hypospray in their hands. At the far end of the room, a short, blonde woman was rising shakily to her feet. Malik couldn’t resist a smile. He should have known that Captain Catherine DeRosa would be the first one on her feet. Only one member of their team seemed to be struggling, so with one last look at Dr. Lisell, he hoisted himself up to stand beside her stasis pod.

Malik spoke calmly as he made his way haltingly toward where their engineer lay on the floor, “Doc’s breathing now. She’ll be ready to start administering proctology exams any minute. If you don’t want to be first in line, you better get your boots on and get ready to find out why our beauty sleep got cut short.”

“Guess I know why you’re in no hurry to find your boots,Mal,” the astrogation officer, Timothy Jackson, wheezed as Malik walked by him on the way to the engineer.

Sarah Spain, the communications officer, barked a laugh and wobbled as she tried to rise from the floor. “Damn it, Timmy. It hurts when I laugh. March your scrawny ass over here so I can drown you in this goop.”

Malik ignored the byplay and quickly knelt beside their engineer, one Christopher Mullins. “Gonna get you fixed up, Chris. Just hang tight.” He opened up the nearby crash cabinet and withdrew the hypospray with one hand while he gently squeezed the other man’s shoulder.

“Mal?,” the engineer murmured, his body contorted into a rictus that had him curled into a fetal position. “I can't see. Can't see anythin'’.”

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Instead of replying, Malik pressed the tip of the hypospray to Chris’ neck and pulled the trigger. Only then did he continue, “That’ll get you straightened out. Take five and just focus on breathing. Before you know it, you’ll be making smartass remarks right alongside Timmy.”

“I’m the only real smartass on team two,” Officer Jackson grumbled as he began pawing through the locker beside his stasis pod to retrieve a pair of boots. “Accept no substitute.”

“Enough chatter,” Captain DeRosa said curtly while she furiously dried the cryogel from her hair with a towel she’d retrieved from her service locker. “Everyone focus on making yourselves presentable. We’re headed to the bridge in three minutes. Someone there is going to have some explaining to do. But until we find out what’s going on, we go by the book. Klaxon is sounding red alert. Everybody kit out accordingly.”

Malik made his way back to his own service locker while the Captain spoke. After quickly wiping his arms and legs down with a coarse white towel, he pulled out his one piece vacsuit and stepped into it. Moments later he was slipping on a pair of socks before sliding his feet into a pair of smart boots that tightened snuggly around his ankles. Then, with an efficiency that spoke of years of routine, Malik fastened his suit onto his boots and onto the gloves he stretched over his hands. Once the suit was sealed up across his chest, he reached back into the locker for his helmet.

Suddenly the ship shook like a leaf caught in a hurricane. The crew members shouted in alarm and more than one fell onto the gel covered floor.

“What was that?!,” barked the science officer, Alex O’Brian. As the oldest member of 2nd Journey, the gruff curmudgeon didn’t even try to keep the frustration from his voice as it devolved into a series of colorful curses.

“That was the superstructure,” Engineer Mullins said in a voice so soft that it could barely be heard over the blaring of the klaxon.

“Explain,” the Captain said curtly as she jerked her helmet from her locker.

Chris flinched away from the intensity of her stare, but after an encouraging nod from Malik the young man continued. “Assuming the ionic deflector is active, there are only two things that could cause that kind of structural resonance. Well, technically, striking another celestial object would be a third. But the damage from striking an asteroid or comet would be catastrophic...”

"Get to the point," DeRosa said as she snapped her own helmet into place.

Mullins winced before quickly continuing, “Either Starlight Journey just launched one of the habitat modules, or she’s beginning to encounter atmospheric resistance.”

“Wait,” Daniella said, speaking for the first time as she looked toward the engineer, her chocolate brown eyes wide with alarm. “Why would 1st crew be launching the habitat modules? When we went under we were more than twenty years from Sigma Tau.”

"What are the chances Matthew and his crew left us in stasis for the remainder of the mission?," Sarah asked as she stepped into her boots. The communication officer seemed more angry than concerned.

"Doubtful," O'Brian said dismissively. The older man was already dressed with his helmet in his hands like a cadet eager for his first spacewalk. "At minimum, Doctor Fischer should have been here to oversee resuscitation."

"He's right," Doctor Lisell said. "There's a reason one of us is always on hand when a crew comes out of stasis. Its dangerous to depend on the automated systems." Her voice trailed off as she glanced toward Malik. "Obviously."

"Which brings us back to atmospheric resistance," Chris mused as he fastened his helmet into place. "That shouldn't be possible, right? Its not like a planet could just sneak up on us."

"Hello!," Jackson said, waving one gloved hand like a kid trying to get the attention of their favorite teacher. "Am I the only one hearing the siren? Does it look like the emergency lights are on to all of you? If somebody planned this, they did a shit job. Let's go find someone to talk to because I'm just a little bit concerned about the ship shaking like a log cabin on a fault line."

Despite himself, a halfhearted chuckle rose from Mal's lip's. "I hate to admit it," he said with obvious reluctance, "but in this rare instance, I think Tim is right."

Catherine DeRosa tipped her head toward Malik in a decisive nod. “Agreed," she said. "Get ready, people On the double.” The Captain's voice was grimly insistent. “Its past time we get out of here. We need to find 1st crew and figure out what’s happening to our ship. We've got 80,000 colonists in cryosleep depending on us and I don't plan on letting them down.”

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