The Second Deimos: Unfortunate Planet

Alia peered about her new surroundings not sure of where she was anymore. This room appeared to be more technical. The great spiraling cryo-cells were gone and now she was just in an ordinary engineering room. Much like one of the rooms her father used to work in, back when they lived in space. Wires hung loose and strange tools lined the walls. There were work benches with projects open and still on them. As she moved along she took note of the layout. This room was more of a suite with several compartments dedicated to what she could only guess to be varying tasks.

Light twinkled faintly through one of the opposing rooms, and as she walked toward it she discovered a captain’s chair peering out at six massive windows, and small stations set up around it most likely for navigation control. She shuddered, she had found the navigation pit. She exited the historic room that would have once been responsible for landing the people within the ship safely and decided to further explore. This would have been a place off limits to ordinary people like her.

She walked past the engineering work bench again and moved around away from the light source at the front nose end of the ship. She walked back and found a sliding door that lay askew. The tilt of the ship had pulled it back and another room lay within. Alia reached out and tugged on the door forcing it to open so that she could enter.

This room was massive and built for luxury and comfort. Gold speckled walls and marbled floors. When she shined her light into the room everything seemed to sparkle. Where a bed might have been was a collapsed wooden frame and some deteriorated furniture. An obsidian desk stood tall and prominent with a few pieces of decayed parchment left on it. Alia gulped nervously.

She turned off her lights letting the darkness of the room envelop her. Some light from the main deck trickled through as well as a low light source of a greenish color which caught her attention at the other end of the room. She followed it curious to see what these other sources of energy would show to her. The ship was such an amazing discovery with plenty of secrets to unveil.

She walked with a silent step as she approached the green light allowing the entity to come into focus. Her heart skipped a beat as she gazed at the things placed before her. There were three cryo-pods. Each filled with a person. A human being in each cryo-pod! They were still sound asleep still waiting to be woken up from their journey. This wasn’t an alien ship, her father was wrong about that; this was human! She reached out touching the polymer glass that contained the beings within, hope filling her heart. A ship intact, a human ship intact. Perhaps her and her father could go home now, perhaps they could get back into space… or maybe they could even get back to Earth.

In her state of surprise she stumbled back from the tanks caught up in the moment of what she saw without paying attention to the objects around her. She tripped over a loose wire and fell back her body slamming hard into the metal cabinet behind her. Her eyes widened in terror as red lights began to flash around her, warning sounds and a voice speaking another language began to talk explaining to her of what was happening. The green liquid holding the bodies began to drain. The people within were being woken up.

She crawled further back and away, she wasn’t sure what to do, didn’t know what to do other than hide. The first pod drained entirely, and red liquid began to poor into the man’s body from one of the tubes attached to him. Once the liquid had entered his body the polymer glass wall before him dropped, and so did he. Dead eyes stared out, this man had not been revived from cryo sleep and never would be. Alia screamed as the second polymer glass chambered dropped and another human fell from it. This one’s body convulsed horribly even though his eyes remained glazed and dead. The body kept shaking over and over again and tears flowed from Alia for she did not know what to do. The final body dropped gasping for air as the second body stopped moving with dead eyes staring out similar to the first one.

Alia had to do something or else this last person would not make it. She ran over to the third body as its eyes glazed over appearing as dead as the counterparts, and thinking back to how she was once told that cryo-fluid could fill a person’s lungs and drown them upon awakening if left in the tank for too long, she administered CPR.

With the persons jaw open she blew as much air as she could in, then pressed down on the diaphragm. A large thick glob of gelatinous cryo-fluid spilled out from the body in front of her. The body stopped convulsing and held still. Alia in her worry crawled back up to the human looking over the features. She reached out to the wrist trying to feel for a pulse. Maybe… maybe there would be a heartbeat. As her small hands made contact with the wrist before her the person came to life.

A sharp pained inhale and eyes snapped to focus. The now living human grabbed onto her and with the contact of the skin Alia felt overwhelmed. Places, images, things happened and not yet to happen, overwhelmed her mind. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her own body began to go frigid stiff as this electrifying creature held onto her. Just as she thought her body could take no more the person let go.

“S…..SS….SORRY….” the human muttered and recoiled away from Alia. The girl took a sharp breath enjoying the freedom from this person’s grasp, glad the electric transfer between the two was over. It was possible that this human had still been hooked up to an electric charge when the body fell from the tank. If that be the case it was amazing that this one survived rather than dying like the others on the floor.

“My name… my name is Doli Galilhali…”

Alia took a look at the human before her. This green slim covered person whose gender could not be discerned. White hair was plastered to the sides of the person’s body and Doli held close any parts deemed ‘private’.

Alia stuttered… if this ship was thousands of years old like her father had told her, then the person before her was also thousands of years old. “H… Hi…” she choked.