I suddenly realized I was asleep.
And by that I didn't mean in the sense of realizing I was dreaming. It was rather a feeling of numb existence where there had been a black void only moments before.
Minutes or was it hours later, another thought entered my struggling mind. A smile. Blue eyes.
I strained my sleep-dulled mind to sharpen the blurry image in my head, but a sharp pain erupting from deep within my chest startled me, the sudden fire in my throat the only thing that existed in my world. I tried to breathe, my lungs not responding to my will, gasping like a fish out of water and panicking even more when I tried to move my arms and legs and failed just as miserably.
The fire in my core consumed me and where I had felt the soft gaze of handsome eyes on me, now a different kind of pressure weighed me down, pressing my body into whatever surface I was resting on.
My mind processed all this slowly, like watching the world from inside a jar of honey. By the time I was able to string together several thoughts, the pain had become unbearable and forced my consciousness back into a void where the blissful absence of pain embraced me like an old friend. The last thought in my mind was a voice desperately calling out for someone.
'Connor'. I realized why that name felt familiar. That someone was me.
"Chief Davidson? Can you hear me?"
A ray of blinding light pierced the darkness. Someone's thumb was holding my eyelid open, flashing my pupil again and again with a small torch. My head ached something fierce and every ray of light felt like a dagger driving deep into my brain.
Had I been shot again? There was no mistaking that sterile smell and the subdued voices and beeps. I was in a hospital.
The light kept hovering above my opened eyes. My fingers twitched with the need to knock that bastard out cold, but I couldn't get my arm to move. I heard myself gasp from the effort it took me to find out that I was still a lifeless corpse. Was I paralyzed? A jolt of fear shot through my body and cold sweat formed on my temple.
"He's moving. He's coming back." Someone grabbed my hand, rubbing it to increase the bloodflow in my numb muscles. I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. Or a whole dozen of them. The neurons in my brain suddenly sparked to life, bringing everything back in a rush, making me wish for the sweet oblivion I used to sleep in until now.
I remembered. The journey to Nightfall. Kyle. His dream of starting a new life there after we finished babysitting a bunch of whiny scientists on what they called an exploration, but which was in fact the foundation of mankinds' first colony on an inhabitable exoplanet. Trappist-One. The mysterious red dwarf with its seven planets, that are forever locked to face their star on one side, while the other rests in eternal darkness, possibly under a blanket of thick ice.
It had sounded like hell to me. But I didn't care. I remembered Kyle's excitement. His hopes.
"His vitals are stabilizing. His temperature is reaching standard levels and his brain waves are finally maxing," someone said with the calm assurance that only medical staff can muster.
"Chief Davidson? Wake up." A soft slap on my cheek caused me to groan in pain, but that slap was nothing compared to the pain I felt in my throat when I tried to swallow down the spit in my mouth.
I raised my hand. Slow, everything I did and thought was too slow, I realized with a stab of shame. My fingers escaped the warm hand that circled them in frantic motions. What the hell. Did they thaw me out of a block of ice?
Another second ticked by and I remembered someone talking to me. I remembered listening carefully and feeling slightly intimidated by what I was told. Kryosleep.
Sure, you couldn't travel to a solar system some 40 light years away and expect to be there by lunch time. The journey took 60 years at a speed that was as close to light speed as mankind could ever get, unless a bunch of well-meaning aliens would treat us to their technological secrets. So if you didn't want to reach Nightfall as a 90 year old geezer, you went into kryosleep. I had no idea how it worked in detail. I wasn't one of these doctors slash gods in white. But I did listen when they explained the procedure to me. Though I swear to whatever god would listen on Nightfall, not one of them mentioned the terrible pain I felt waking up.
Right now I felt like a demon straight out of hell. Relief swept over me when that jerk in white stopped flashing my eyes with blinding light. I contracted my arm muscles and was rewarded with the feeling of touch in the pads of my fingers. Awaking from kryosleep did actually feel like coming back to life. As my nervous system adjusted to having a responding body again, my mind wandered to Kyle. Had he felt the same torment waking up? My newly-revived heart skipped a beat when I thought of the scalding pain that felt so much worse than even the gunshot wound I had taken back when I was a dumb, reckless recruit in the wastelands of New London.
I needed to find Kyle. My eyesight was still shot to shit and I felt like running a marathon just trying to crane my neck a bit. I blinked the blurry shapes hovering above me into shape. A worried face appeared, accompanied by a hand with raised fingers waving back and forth in front of my eyes. It took me a moment to realize that the lady asked me a question.
"How many fingers do you see?", she repeated. My throat was still on fire, but I found a strange pleasure in raising my hand and extending three fingers, mimicking her motion. Her gaze softened when she saw the cocky smile on my face.
"He'll be fine. Give him some time to put himself together, but for the first couple of hours, someone needs to look after him, make sure his brain functions are stable."
I heard rustling beside me. I couldn't tell how many people were in the room with me. I blinked and forced my eyes open despite the glaring light from the spots above the examining table. My skin felt strangely slippery, as if I'd been bathing in slime.
A male voice spoke up.
"The descent will begin in 30 minutes. These unforeseen complications with his wakeup process already delayed our approach on Nightfall by three hours. We'll lose today's window if we don't act now"
The doc sighed. "You know we'll have to seal sickbay until landing is complete. His vitals need to be monitored or he might not survive the dive to the planet's surface!"
This wasn't the kind of conversation a guy wants to hear waking up from kryosleep when his body still feels like a car wreck.
"He'll have to bite the bullet then. Further treatment needs to wait until we're planetside. Understood?" I heard footsteps leaving the room, followed by an annoyed sigh.
I felt some rustling next to me and grabbed a white clothed arm.
"Chief Davidson?", she looked worried, gently removing my fingers from her coat. I blinked at her, moving my lips, but not making any sound.
"Connor, don't worry. Everything will be fine." She began to wipe my skin with a soft cloth, removing the weird liquid I was covered in. I was grateful to feel each swipe of the cloth on my skin. It made me feel alive where I've been a numb piece of meat only minutes before.
I stopped her by grabbing her arm once again and pulling her closer to my face. She finally understood my intention and put her ear close to my lips, a few loose strands of hair tickling my cheeks.
"My... room mate. He'll look after me," I wheezed, surprised how fragile my own voice sounded. The doc lifted her head and looked at me with a frown.
"You sure? Is he medically trained?" My mind was still too dizzy to respond, but my eyes followed her as she walked over to the side, picking up a tablet and typing away with her fingers. She moved to the intercom surface by the door and pressed a button.
"Open line to quarter 34," she said. A soft beeping sound confirmed the connection, right before a male voice responded.
"Officer Harrison here. How can I help ya, doc?"
"Please report to sickbay immediately," the doc sounded a bit wary. But not as wary as I felt when I realized that the voice I heard clearly wasn't Kyle's. My brain was still in shambles, but the one thing I felt confident about was that I would recognize Kyle's voice anywhere.
My nervous system was still playing tricks on me. First my skin felt warm, then a wave of coldness made me shudder. I wasn't sure if I was glad or not by the time my skin simply itched and the need to scratch myself actually motivated me enough to move my hands and arms. When the door opened and someone walked in, I was too preoccupied to notice the newcomer.
A hand on my shoulder had me look up, the rush of excitement in my blood a sure thing I was slowly getting my senses back. But the brown eyes I looked into weren't familiar. The apprehensive smile was handsome, but it wasn't Kyle's.
"Hey Chief. Glad you're among the living now. Doc says it's time for you to get ready for a little rough ride down to Nightfall."
I couldn't place the voice. Even the accent sounded foreign to me. Who was he?
Someone put a sticker on my temple and flattened it with a thumb and forefinger. I winced at the unwelcome pressure.
"This," she put a small black device into the stranger's hands, "will scan his brainwaves. You need to make sure the readings remain in the green area. If they move to red, call me."
Everyone was in a rush now. I saw a new nurse approach the examining table, finishing the job of cleaning me up and putting some white sweatpants on my naked body.
"What if the readings go bad during the descent? We're not exactly safe to walk around then," the stranger asked. The doc sighed heavily before helping the nurse lift me to a sitting position. The world suddenly swayed and my eyes couldn't focus. I could feel the blood rush from my head, leaving me dizzy and blanching like a ghost. Awesome.
"Then we gotta hope he's still alive by the time we're down. The Commander won't wait for another day."
I forced my eyes to stay still, willing the world to stop moving. When I sighed heavily, pressing my eyelids together to focus, a strong arm gripped my shoulder and pulled me off the table. My knees were like jelly and my full weight bore down on the man's smaller frame.
"What if he loses consciousness during the dive? Would that be dangerous for him?", he asked, his voice straining with the effort to keep me upright.
"He will lose his consciousness, Officer Harris. Be grateful if you don't. But as long as the readings are fine, he should be able to make it without slipping into a coma."
The doc sounded impatient now. "Listen, I'm sorry to put this responsibility on you, but you need to get him to your quarters and secure him for landing. I have to clear sickbay."
Everyone looked up when a computer voice began announcing a countdown until the ship entered the planet's exosphere and the pull of its gravity field. 15 minutes. Hardly enough time for me to reach my quarter and get secured, let alone to look for Kyle. Where the hell was he? I was reluctant to admit that I was scared and I hated to feel helpless while everyone around me seemed to lose their shit.
I tested my legs and felt a jolt of pain when I used my thigh muscles to lift a bit of my weight off the man's shoulder.
"Easy big guy, I've got you," he said and more dragged than walked me out of sickbay.
The lights in the corridor had gone dark red and blinking. I strained my body to help with the walk, but the pain in my unused muscles was unbearable. I was barely conscious when we entered a quarter and he lowered me into an extractable seat that was pulled from the metal wall. I felt my companion strap me into the safety belts, securing them closely to my body, pushing the breath out of my lungs. I groaned.
"Sorry, man. But you don't wanna slip out of them during landfall. Unfortunately there's no runway down there waiting for us."
The computer voice gave a final warning. 1 minute left. I grabbed the guy's arm and looked at his face. Beads of sweat clustered his forehead and his eyes were cast down on the medic reader in his hand. He looked back at me, tiny wrinkles forming around his eyes when he forced himself to smile.
"Looking good, chief. You'll make it down in one piece, I promise" He gently pried his arm away from my fingers and stumbled to his seat on the opposite side of the room. We faced each other. I watched him secure the belts around his body and lean back just in time for the ship to make contact with the planet's upper atmosphere.
A jolt went through the ship and the metal frame of our quarter began to shake desperately, as if the whole spacecraft was putting up a fight against the particles of the exosphere.
My seatbelt cut into my chest painfully and I struggled to breathe. A few minutes later, the window showing the planet's gentle curve lit up in a soft orange flame, indicating that the density of the atmosphere was increasing, creating a shock wave of frictional heat in front of the ship that the heat shields had to deflect efficiently, thus creating a soft orange halo around its hull.
The shaking got even stronger now, like riding a mountainbike over a field of spiky rocks. My head banged again and again against the wall behind me and I couldn't keep my neck upright steadily enough to counterbalance the staccato of jolts. I finally gave up and let my head drop to my chest, my mind surrendering to whatever would happen to us on this damn ship. The last thing I remembered was my companion looking at his reader, then back at me and giving me a thumbs up.
The world faded away and while the straining metal screamed around me, I found my mind wandering back to the only question that mattered. Where the hell was Kyle?
***
The landing was messy. The Aquarius descended in a steep angle to make good use of the planetary winds that were remarkably strong this close to the terminator line. We had to catch our designated landing site right there in order to be able to get off the ship without either freezing or burning to death. Besides, reaching the dark side of the planet would freeze up the ship's boosters, making it impossible to start over and try again. Our pilot did one hell of a job, though, keeping the craft calm even when hail the size of tennis balls banged against our quarter window while crossing a cloud.
The terrible shuddering of the hull had stopped now. I glanced over at Chief Harrison. His head hung low on his chest, his body suspended in the belts like a lifeless ragdoll going with the motions. The brain wave thingy in my hand still beeped calmly, the reader staying within the green limits. Apparently everything was fine, even if the man looked white as a ghost. He only wore sweatpants and his muscular torso swayed back and forth, a sheen of sweat making his skin glow in the eerie red light that reminded us all of the dangerous descent. As if we weren't nervous enough as it is.
I noticed gray shapes outside our window and mistook them for clouds, but squeezing my eyes to adjust them to the twilight of Nightfall, I noticed that they were mountain peaks that we passed during our descent. We were approaching touchdown any minute. I heard the thrusters being fired, slowing down our flight to airplane speed. We were now gliding on the wind rather than forcefully breaking through the dense atmosphere. I swallowed and took a deep breath. It couldn't be long now.
Harrison groaned again and I was tempted to unbuckle my seatbelt to make sure he was alright. I didn't know the guy but I hated to see him like this. Judging by his size and built, he certainly wasn't a guy who was used to his body playing tricks on him. A strange thought occurred to me. Was it weird to share quarters with my superior? I guessed so. But then, I wouldn't have expected to get a chance to be on this mission anyway. Now here I was, millions of miles away from home and ready for a new start, like every soul on this ship.
My thoughts were brutally interrupted when the thrusters finally slowed the ship to touchdown speed and the wheels were being extended for immediate landing. A sudden jolt went through the ship and the metal screeched desperately, the whole vessel swaying dangerously as one of the axes kissed a rock, veering the ship to the side. The pilot apparently fired the thrusters again, taking the ship off the ground before touching down again with what I could only describe as a bang, ripping off the ships wheels and setting the vessel on the rocky ground violently, the velocity jarring us over the surface for what felt like minutes until we came to a screeching halt.
I raised my hand and winced when I touched a growing bruise on my skull. I must have banged my head on the metal wall behind me. I cursed the damn planet already. What a welcome.
If anything, the pioneers could have picked up the rocks near the landing site. It's not like they didn't know we were coming. They had 80 fucking years to do it.
Not waiting for the blinking lights to die, I unfastened my belt and knelt down in front of Harrison's groaning body. He was bleeding on his chest. The belt had chafed his skin raw. I cursed myself for putting him in that thing without a shirt on, but the thought hadn't even crossed my mind when the doc basically threw the guy on me only minutes before the descent.
I opened the belts and his large frame fell into my arms. He smelled strangely of sweat mixed with the neuronal fluid that we had all awakened in. His body was heavily muscled and tall, but I managed to manhandle him and get him to lie down on his cot. I held the back of his head to prevent him from banging it until he was fully spread on the surface.
Unsure what to do next, I looked at the reader I was still carrying and noticed that it wasn't showing anything on its tiny screen. Looking up at Harrison's face I saw that the white plaster carrying the transmitters had peeled off his skin and was hanging in the dark hair above his ears.
"Shit! Chief Harrison, can you hear me?" I tapped his shoulder and shook him softly. "I think you need to wake up, sir!"
He groaned, a deep frown on his face, as he raised his arms to cover his eyes. "Kyle?", he moaned. I wasn't sure if he was in pain or just exhausted after that clusterfuck of a landing.
"My name is Officer Griff Hansen, sir. You're in your quarter and I need to make sure you're conscious, until the doc is ready to look at you."
His eyelids fluttered and closed. Damn, that wasn't good, right?
I took his chin in my hand and moved his face towards me, startling him. His eyes locked with mine. He seemed to be able to focus, although he looked more confused than ever.
"Get Kyle...", he said, grabbing my arm with surprising strength, trying to move himself into a sitting position. Kyle? Who the hell was Kyle?
I looked at him blankly and was grateful when a beep at the intercom announced an incoming call. I spoke up to accept it.
"Chief Harrison, gather a security team and report at the airlock for further instructions." Sub-Commander Davidson's impatient voice.
Harrison watched me with frantic eyes, his fingers digging into my forearm. He looked a bit like a lunatic with his beard shadow growing in and his mouth gaping open with unspoken questions. I made the decision in the blink of an eye.
"Understood, sir. End of call", I said and pried Harrison's fingers off my wrist. "Open a line to sickbay," I ordered over my shoulder.
Two soft beeping sounds later, Doctor Martinez was on the line. "How is he doing?" Always right to the point. I liked her.
"He seems confused. I need to rally a team for Davidson. Can you take over now?"
The doc confirmed and I patted Harrison's naked shoulder, pushing him gently back down.
"Why don't you rest a bit. I'll take care of things until you're ready, sir." He looked back at me, his brown eyes calm and his demeanor collected. His gaze followed me as I got up and walked through the door to the corridor, just stopping for a beat to look back at him, his eyes still locked on mine.
"And then we'll go find Kyle, alright?", I said. He nodded and I left the room, the sliding door closing silently behind me.
***
"Richard, I can't keep a lid on it any longer. She's filing a lawsuit right this minute!"
I pressed the cell so hard against my ear, I was sure it'd come back in pieces. "You gotta shut her up for good, Phil."
I could imagine Phil's shocked face. The wimp. "I'll just pretend you didn't say that," he said.
"You're my lawyer, Phil, and I expect you to keep that shit under control," I hissed, suddenly aware that people were staring at me from across the room at the McArthur Space Center in Pensacola.
"Damn right, I'm your lawyer, Rich. And in that capacity I'd advise you to finally take the command of the Nightfall mission," Phil said. He lowered his voice. "And as your friend, I'd tell you to get your ass outta here better sooner than later. She's instigated a fucking FBI investigation. If she vanishes now, you'd be the prime suspect in any case. So don't even think about it."
I rubbed my eyes, the strain of the previous months weighing me down. I looked around the room. There wasn't a sofa or even a plastic chair to rest my ass on. Damn NASA and their cheap suits.
"The Nightfall mission is a one way ticket, Phil. If I sign on, I'll spend the rest of my life with a bunch of sci-fi nerds on a shithole planet that doesn't even have a decent beach."
Phil seemed to ponder that for a moment. "Last I heard, there's a huge ocean on Nightfall, so you'd probably find someplace nice if you looked hard enough."
I couldn't believe it. He didn't take me seriously.
"The place doesn't even have a sun, Phil," I commented drily. "Can you imagine a beach without sun?"
"That's bullshit. Trappist-1 is a sun. Even I know that," he said, a little too quickly. I heard him shuffle paper in the background. Apparently he considered the official side of our conversation over.
"It's a fucking red dwarf, you asshole!" I yelled into the cell. People were turning their heads at me. I raised the back of my hand to wipe the beading sweat off my temple.
"I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life in a place without daylight, dammit!", I added, lowering my voice again.
Phil sighed. "You're the space expert, Rich. All I can tell you is, take the mission and be a legend to billions of people, leading mankind to a new planet. Or stay, and rot in prison. Let me know what it'll be." A beeping tone told me that Phil had ended the call without waiting for my response.
The little shit. I couldn't believe this was happening. Replaying Phil's words in my mind, my choice seemed to be easy. Still, I felt as if I had to put a signature under my own death warrant this time.
Hansen didn't even wear his uniform when he showed up at the airlock, finding me, my entire command team and a couple of scientists waiting there.
"This is the security team Harrison has gathered?", I asked sarcastically. "One man? Where's Harrison?"
Hansen looked at me, unsure if he was supposed to salute to me or not. He finally straightened his back and clasped his hands behind his back.
"Chief Harrison is still recovering from kryosleep, Sir. He instructed me to lead the team this time." He looked at me, trying to read my impassive face.
"So, where's your team, then?" I said and turned my back on him, instructing Marcia Wilson, my second in command to fetch the oxygen masks we were gonna need outside until our lungs accustomed to the lower oxygen partial pressure in Nightfall's atmosphere.
I was well aware that Officers Jackson and Riley were with us in the room, but I liked watching Hansen's confusion, right before he spotted them and gave them orders about the next steps. He wasn't doing too bad. I had to give him that.
I liked my security fearless and largely flexible, which was the reason why I had hand-picked them carefully for this mission. Hansen wasn't my first choice, though, so I wasn't sure about his value to my crew.
