Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) Read Free Page A

battering ram. I had another look around, keen to keep myself anchored in the weightless environment. Like before, there was nothing. I gently propelled myself away from the pod, gliding silently and effortlessly through the chill, dim air. I passed half a dozen more stasis pods, each within arm’s distance should I have needed to stop—after all, there was no other way in zero-g. No way available to me, anyway. I passed over the metallic grating of Level 8 and below its counterpart forming the ceiling and the floor of Level 9. A few more pods ahead stood a pair of sturdy-looking vertical I-beams—one either side of the walkway nestled between the nearest pods. Using friction, I brushed the dirty canopies of five pods, turning my head as I passed the girder, slowing myself to a halt at the sixth pod. I’d seen what I needed. After reorienting myself toward the rear side of the structural column, no more than five feet away, I flew toward the fire ax affixed to it. Why didn’t I think of this before? I asked myself; although I doubted it would’ve saved Kate Alves. Whatever had taken her young life was beyond the skills of a first aider with no medical equipment.
    With hands outstretched like Superman, I cushioned my approach and hung on with my left arm while releasing the ax with my right.
    Retracing my steps, I arrived back at the stasis pod of Evert Rietmuller. As the first ax blow bit into the plexiglass, I wondered what the other pods contained. Were the red status lights of Evert and Kate the harbingers of their demise? All the other lights I’d seen showed no illumination at all apart from my own, which was green. What this all meant, I didn’t yet know, so I tore into Evert’s canopy glad of the warmth of exertion. I wasn’t so glad of the rancid smell of death that came wafting from the breach. I continued breathing only through my mouth, a technique I’d used many times before in a former life.
    I wedged the ax handle into the gap under the pod to keep it from floating away and then pulled the internal canopy release.
    The corpse of Evert Rietmuller lay there in its restraints, the stasis suit loose fitting around his skeletal limbs. Unlike Kate Alves, he was dry all over, his blond hair swaying slightly under the direction of some unseen airflow. The fact that skin still covered his bones meant that he’d died relatively recently—relative to the twelve decades we must’ve been traveling for. There’d been moisture—preservation fluid at least—inside the pod meaning his state was more a case of recent death than long-term mummification. I bent down and felt beneath his back. It was still damp—a disconcerting mix of preservation fluid and God-knows-what from his body. I made a mental note to wash my hands at the earliest opportunity. Surveying the body both front and back of the corpse for causes of death, I could see no clues. I removed the stasis suit—a task well worth avoiding—in search of the same, but still found nothing. Redressing Evert for dignity’s sake, I closed the stasis pod and floated above what had become the modest, intelligent man’s casket. I still didn’t understand why he’d left a wife and kids back on Earth—he must have had his reasons—but I doubted they were still alive after so long. Yet again, my only consoling thought was that he might see his loved ones in whatever place he believed was waiting for them.
    Bowing my head, I said, “Rest in peace, Evert Rietmuller.”
    Keen to start breathing through my nose again, I retrieved the ax and glided away from Evert and Kate and back to the ax’s former home. As I held onto the cold steel column, I listened once again. Still nothing. It could have been like this for a hundred days or a hundred years, there was no way to know.
    I spent the next ten minutes going from pod to pod, cleaning an aperture, and then looking inside. The first was a young man I didn’t recognize. The second a young woman, perhaps just a