Among Stars

Pod Trouble

With barely no lights on, the room looked eerily empty. All you could see outside was the landing bay, which was barely lit itself. The only thing that revealed that everything was just not dead were the many colorful lights on the pedestal itself.

The lights turned back on, and a sweeping sound, rising in pitch as it went, was heard throughout the ship. Hidden speakers in the room scratched and whined, then died down. A series of weird beeps was heard.

Then, in a strangely familiar, and yet unrecognizable voice came from the speakers, "That was almost a total failure," it said.

"Quera?" Naina said, raising her eyebrow.

"Indeed, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "The audio circuits are a lot different from the ones in the Travelstar. I can't seem to modulate my voice to what it was like. Does it bother you, Captain Melcey?"

"Honestly? A little. Not that much, but it's like... you're not... you," Naina said.

There was a sound like someone trying to strangle an electric crocodile that was, at the same time, trying to sing the worst country song in existence.

"Is this any better?" Quera said and sounded almost exactly like she did on the Travelstar.

Naina smiled. "Yes, this is better. It's a bit different, but honestly, the Travelstar's audio system is probably fried anyway," she said. "You might even sound more like you did in the beginning, before we fried the Travelstar."

"Acknowledged, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "I'm saving the parameters and I will use this voice from now on. Captain Perez, there is something I need to ask from you."

"Please to finally hear and meet you, Quera," Perez said. "Ask away."

"You have set Dr. Mizuni's sleeping pod to manual maintenance mode. I cannot access, nor administer, it without the codes. May I have them?"

"Ah, sure," Perez said, dug up a small data pad from his pockets, and read a series of numbers and characters to Quera.

"Thank you, Captain Perez," Quera said. "Dr. Mizuni's pod is now answering to the automatic system, but it's not actually working. I'm afraid Dr. Mizuni will perish, if she is not waken up, and the pod opened. I am estimating time left to be 2 days, 18 hours, and 54 seconds."

"Daew. Well now," Naina said flatly. "Can you access the pod's protocols? Can we wake her up without damaging anything?"

"The crew log contains the procedures to start and close the pods, if that helps," Perez said.

"Encrypting crew logs," Quera said. "Estimated time: 2 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes, and 5 seconds." There was a pause. "These are some very heavily encrypted files. Why so much security?"

"It was built as a military ship," Perez said.

"Acknowledged, Captain Perez," Quera said.

"That leaves us just a few hours to come up with something, if the crew log doesn't contain enough information," Naina said. "Quera, what's failing with the pod? Can we use the working, but disabled pod to repair Mizuni's?"

"Unknown. The pods are mostly self-contained, and I only have access to the maintenance system," Quera said.

"So, if I opened the disabled pod," Naina said and scratched the tip of her left ear. "And if there's a way to bypass the security and allow you access to the whole pod, I could do that to Mizuni's pod."

"I find it highly doubtful that it would be possible, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

"I have to do something, Quera," Naina said desperately. "I can't just sit here for two days and spin around on a chair. I have to do something."

"I know, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "I'm transferring the available specs of the pods to you now."

"Thank you, Quera," Naina said and smiled. "I'm going to take apart your pod, Perez. Wanna join?"

"Sure," Perez said. "It's not like I haven't just sat down on my arse long enough already."

They walked to the room with the pods in silence, neither wanting to really bring up the possibility that they couldn't do anything, and the crew logs would be a red herring. They pulled Perez's pod half-way out of the wall, which was easy because it was disabled and they didn't need to pay attention to power and wires. The covers came off relatively easily, but the insides looked to be a much more demanding job to handle.

Naina whistled. "These are some high-tech parts. I don't know if I even have the necessary tools for these," she said. "This needs precision equipment and automated tools. Don't know if I have anything that could work with these," she said, shaking her head.

"I'll go see in the Engineering section. I heard that Dr. Williams was going to do something extraordinary, so there might be some extraordinary tools," he said.

"Ah, good!" Naina said and picked up a datapad and tapped at it awhile. "Here, I've listed some possible tools that would do the job. See if you can find anything on this list," she said and handed the datapad to Perez.

"See you later," Perez said, grabbing the datapad, and heading out of the room.

Naina removed a couple more covers and plates that she could and then leaned on the wall, looking at the now-stripped pod, and sighed. She glanced over at Mizuni's pod and shook her head.

"I don't know what to do, Dr. Mizuni. I came here to save you, and here I am, completely out of tools and ideas. Your only hope is a well-encrypted log that may end up being totally useless," Naina muttered aloud. "It's no way to go, in a dying sleeping pod, without any way to even know there's something wrong."

Perez came back an hour or so later and had a bunch of boxes in his hands. He handed them to Naina, and she started opening them, and her face went from depressed to positive in a short while.

"These are super high quality!" she exclaimed. "I think I can work with these," she said. "I may need your help here, Perez. Let's get to work. We have a brilliant scientist to save."