Clagmar woke with a start. The cryogenic chamber was set to wake him when he was roughly a week out from the old home world. As he started waking up and taking in his surroundings, he noticed all the flashing red lights. This was not a good sign. Something must have gone wrong, luckily it appeared life support was still working.

  The system had a failsafe where it woke the captain up first if there were any issues with the ship. It was up to the captain to ascertain what the issue was and if he needed any more of the crew to be woke up. Clagmar wondered what the issue was that the captain felt the need to wake him. Clagmar was just a soldier, he didn’t know anything about the workings of the ship. Clagmar and his team had only been brought along as a backup plan if the new citizens of their old home world were found to be uncooperative.

  Clagmar jumped from the tube and was hit by a wave of nausea. The scientist had warned him his may happen. The crew of the ship were not the first people to undergo cryogenic sleep, but they were the first ones to stay in suspension for this long. The longest anyone had been in cryogenic suspension, prior to this mission, was two years. The scientists’ believed if they could manage two years with no issues, the flight would be no problem. Of all the test subjects about one third experienced sickness upon waking. Based on the data they had, they scientist said that number would increase the longer the sleep was.

  As Clagmar steadied himself, he began looking around for the captain. He appeared to be alone. He was under the impression that the captain would have to awaken anyone else he needed directly. He should be here. The nausea passed and Clagmar attempted to stand again. The gravity was not right and Clagmar catapulted to the ceiling.

  “Okay, life support works, gravity doesn’t,” he said aloud though no one was there to hear him. Pushing off the stasis pod, he moved to the nearest terminal. I guess the zero-gravity training wasn’t as worthless as he thought when taking the course.

  “Let’s see what exactly is going on with you,” he said to the ship as he pulled up the interface on the screen. They had all taken a course on controlling the ship and the systems that ran it. It was a rudimentary one, but it was better than nothing. He was able to silence the alarms that had started blaring when he woke but was unable to stop the insistent flashing lights.

  As he looked over the notifications, he noted the ship was close to the old home world, but the time was sooner than expected. He continued to go over the notifications and began looking over the flight pattern. When he couldn’t make sense of either he decided to go find the captain.

  He headed off to the captain’s room. When he got there, the room was empty. He looked around the room and noticed that it appeared as if no one had been in here since launch. Puzzled, he turned and headed back to the cryogenics bay.

  He had a sinking feeling as he reentered the room. He went to the nearest bay; this one had another member of his team in it. He tapped the screen to bring it to life. Everything looked normal on the screen. He decided to wake his comrade. As he went through the steps required to wake someone, the system keep popping up errors. He had no idea what the errors meant, he just cleared them away and continued through the steps.

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  The chamber opened and another wave of nausea hit Clagmar. This was not the same as the sickness from deep sleep, this was from the stench that permeated the air when the chamber opened. He quickly closed the chamber back. This must have been what happened to the captain as well. Clagmar went to the front of the room where the captains cryogenic chamber was. He got the same errors while he was opening the captain’s chamber. As the chamber opened the same sickening stench of death wafted out of the chamber.

  Of the twelve-man crew, Clagmar was number ten. If his suspicions were right everyone higher up was dead and that only left him and the two crew members below him in rank. The system was set up in such a way that if there was an issue it would attempt to awaken the captain. If the captain had not logged onto one of the terminals in ten hours, the next person in rank would be awoken. It would go on this way until the twelfth crew member was tried. If there was still no response the ship would self-destruct. Clagmar began to wish he had not woken up.

  Clagmar knew what he had to do but knowing did not make the task any easier. He would have to go, one by one, through all the chambers. Any crew members that hadn’t survived would have to be jettisoned into the void of space. It was protocol. The Drakon government did not want to risk spreading any diseases the new inhabitants didn’t already have. It was risky enough sending the crew down alive, but at least they could leave the planet if there was any trouble.

  Clagmar started right away. The chambers had been built with this in mind. Each chamber could independently be dumped into space. He sealed the captain’s chamber up and jettisoned him. He continued through all the other crew with higher rank, stopping only to regain his composure once or twice. As Clagmar anticipated, they were all dead.

  With all the deceased members taken care of, Clagmar moved to the two remaining pods. He prayed to the Gods that at least one of them would reawaken. The thought of going to the planet by himself was unbearable. As he approached pod number eleven, he prayed once more. This chamber contained Rofind, his younger brother. In that instant Clagmar made a decision. He would wait and check Rofind last. If the member in pod twelve was dead, he would just initiate the self-destruct sequence, dip into the captain’s personal booze collection, and embrace death.

  He approached chamber twelve and read the name, Kunpo. He did not know this crew member. They had been a replacement for one of the engineers who became ill the night before takeoff. He read the crew file for Kunpo. He knew he was just killing time, not wanting to find out he was alone. Kunpo had just graduated from the academy this was to be her first mission. What a way to start your career, Clagmar thought.

  “Enough messing around,” he said out loud to one again. He started the wakeup sequence and much to his relief, he received no errors. Unlike the other pods, whose systems had been turned off already, but the door did not open, this pod would require time to raise the temperature before waking up the individual.

  “This looks promising.” With that, he turned to chamber eleven, his brother’s. “Here goes nothing,” he stated as he began punching in the command to wake his brother. He went through the sequence without any errors, just like in chamber twelve. He now had eight hours, the normal time it takes to warm up the occupant, to figure out what had happened to the ship and the other pods. The same thing could still happen to the two pods currently defrosting.