Aetna Adrift by Erik Wecks

Author:Erik Wecks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Erik Wecks
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Prison Cell

When Jack finally found himself standing in front of the escape plan, he laughed and immediately regretted it as his ribs punished him. How or why it had been stashed there Jack didn't know, but someone had strapped a Unity standard escape pod to the side of a solid waste processing unit in a location difficult to see from anywhere but straight above it. Even then, buried among the towers of exchangers and water purifiers, the dome of its heat shield would have appeared completely normal, like just another cooling tower. It would have been almost impossible to spot unless you walked right up to it.

The sixteen-foot capsule had been placed on the opposite side of the waste processing unit from the control panel and maintenance hatches. Getting to it hadn't been fun. It had required him to hop over the railing of the walkway and make his way untethered behind the unit. Jack had taken five minutes to find the courage to unhook his tether.

Standing at the foot of a capsule almost three times his height, Jack looked up and saw the ladder he would have to use to pull himself up hand over hand into the door which lay open on the narrow cylinder six feet above his head.

I guess I don't have any better options. Staring up, Jack put his gloved hands on the hips of his pressure suit. Thinking back, he realized that he had lost his ability to choose and plan the moment Randall and company set foot on Aetna. Jack reached for the lowest rung of the ladder and wondered if he climbed toward his own prison cell.

He climbed without attaching his feet to the rungs. Since weight and gravity weren't a problem, it seemed more natural that way, and it didn't require him to push off with his wounded leg. He reached the door without incident and clambered inside. The capsule was a cramped affair with barely enough room for eight passengers. In the zero-g environment, he spun himself gently into the command seat. He sat with his back to the engines and his legs pointing toward the void of space.

So what next? thought Jack.

Looking back, he realized that the hatch remained wide open. He painfully got out of his seat and, using a hand hold inside the capsule, gained the leverage he needed to shut the door. Once it closed, Jack noticed a pad next to it which blinked red. He palmed the pad, and the door sealed tight with a clunk, which he felt, rather than heard. At the same moment, the cabin began to pressurize.

In the midst of climbing back to the captain's chair, the ship startled him by recognizing his heads-up display and broadcasting information. I thought this heads-up wasn't supposed to be part of the cloud. How could a Unity escape pod find it? The screen above the command chair came to life and displayed similar information.

First, the ship sent him a set of critical alerts regarding the life support situation on board the vessel.

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