Forum: Story Ideas

Forty eight year old Karen Felsted was currently sitting in the Captain's chair of the New Hope. A cargo freighter contracted to transport two thousand women to a newly discovered virgin planet. She wasn't the captain. She had no clue as to how to captain a ship, but it was a seat of power. Sitting in it was a statement of power. And that was important.

Propped up before her, lay her notebook. In it, she was currently planning a government. A government she was going to be in charge of. Obviously. There was no one better suited to the role. She was absolutely certain of that.

The other committee members had plans for votes and forums, but everyone knew, that if you wanted something done, you needed just one person and that person was her.

In front of her lay the basis of a constitution. One where everyone would carry out her wishes. To make a government run smoothly, it needed a firm hand. A hand that had law on its side to quell spurious and damaging leadership challenges.

By chance, she had seen a program about the new colony on television. A colony of only women, run by women, and knew instantly, that was her calling. Men, after all, were the root of all the worlds evils. This world would have none. It would be a safe utopia. Under her charge it would be the envy of all male controlled systems. She hadn't, technically, raised the minimum funds required to join 'The Ark' as some of the other women called the freighter, but they needed her, even if they didn't know it.

She had used her presence and indubitable fact that she was what they needed, to become part of this historic endeavour. She had earned her place. Not manipulated, like that cow Florence often shouted out to the other women of the committee. It wasn't her fault toxic men had stolen her money. Money due to her. And of course the courts, courts ruled by men had defended their own, defrauding, yet again, women.

Karen picked up her mug of coffee, took a sip. It was poor quality. Supplied by a man, no doubt. They could never do anything right.

The sooner they were free of the patriarchy, the better.

The wouldn't even allow the freighter to depart unless it had men on board. The Pigs. The freighter was mostly automatic with the MALE engineer having override codes and the supposedly 'official' title of 'Captain'. Not that he was often on the bridge, thankfully.

He spent most of his grubby, sexist existence, down in the engineering bay.

There were two other male engineering staff. They claimed to be gay and not interested in women. She didn't believe that for a moment. Men lied. It was their default setting. She put her mug down.

Above the console was a large sign forbidding the presence of food and drink. There was one on the bridge hatch as well. But that only applied to men as they were clumsy oafs.

"Karen?"

Who dared to disturb her during her important planning time. She looked round, not bothering to hide her sneer when she saw it was the backstabbing bitch Florence.

"What do you want?"

"The committee has met and voted to remove you from it."

"Why was the vote not held in my presence? Doing so without either my knowledge or presence makes any vote void. Let me guess. You are now the new committee leader? Pft. You couldn't lead a horse to water."

"It was a unanimous vote. You were 'not there' as it was about you and your narcissistically manipulative behaviour. You are banned from ever standing for a seat in the council again. And you lied about your qualifications. We checked. And you never even raised any money for the commune. We checked that also. From this moment on, you have no place in our midst. We will give you time to collect your things and put them in storage. You will then report to Dr Issac, who will prep you and put you into cryo sleep as you will be returning with the freighter and the crew. They have no use for you either."

"Oh, and I suppose you asked them as well did you?"

"Actually, we did. The freighters crew unanimously said that you were too toxic to be awake during their return."

Karen looked into each woman's eyes, saw the firmness, the resoluteness and resolve to their words.

"Pft. You are just as bad as men. All of you. You will fail without me."

"That's a risk we are more than willing to take." They were not going to be moved. Karen could see that. "Please report to Dr Issac, or we escort you there. We will drag you by your hair if needs be."

Karen stood, collected her notebook and coffee, which she had no longer any desire for. She wasn't going to carry that back to her bunk. She snapped her wrist out, dumping the mug's contents across the console. Without a backward glance she stormed down to her berth to collect her possessions for storage. The bridge hatch shut after her.

"Phew. Did you really ask the crew? "

"No."

"What if she asks the other committee members?"

"She won't."

"If she finds out you lied?"

"She won't. Helene' knows what she has to do. Once she is in cryo, she won't be a problem."

"But..."

"Okay, look, we will follow her, make sure she speaks to no-one. And that she heads straight to Helene' after she has stored her possessions. Okay?"

The women deported, leaving the bridge empty as coffee slipped through the gaps to drip on the delicate circuits below. One short led to another, a cascade that grew exponentially. The software didn't understand the data it's sensors were reporting and then came an input it knew and knew how to respond to. It activated the emergency main drive purge. Explosive bolts detonated in sequence. First blowing out the protective hull plates. Sensors recorded successful ejection and the next sequence activated, blowing the drive supports.

The computer registered successful disconnect. Emergency valves slammed shut. Shaped charges detonated, blowing both the main drives and the primary reactor out into warp space.

With no drive, the freighter 'New Hope' dropped out of warp.

***

A series of shakes, when and where they should not have been, roused Mannie from his sleep. The emergency lights were on and he could tell instantly the drives had shut down. Wearing only his boxers, he ran as fast as he could to engineering. He looked in confusion at the readings. Confusion turned to horror.

For some reason, the 'New Hope' had purged her propulsion drives and the main reactor.

"What the fuck." What had told it to do that? He looked through the incident logs. The order had come from the captains console.

"What the fuck..." They had dropped out of warp, God knew where. Barefoot he ran through the corridors. He passed a sleep added Amelia, looking out from her bunk bleary eyed.

"What's going on Mannie? Why are we on emergency power?"

"Bridge!"

Amelia stared bewildered after his naked back for a moment before she darted back into her berth to put on her overalls, boots, tool belt and followed.

The bridge was empty. He had put it out of bounds to all passengers at the start of the contract, but certain individuals of the freighter's hire, had kicked up a fuss with head office. He had received a terse command before they entered warp, that he was allow certain members of the customer access. He wasn't happy about that, but orders were orders, so he had locked down the consoles so they could not be tampered with.

There was liquid on the Captain's console.

"Oh fuck no...." He tentatively sniffed the liquid.

"What's going on Mannie? Why have the drives and the reactor shut down?"

Mannie looked over at Amelia, registered that she had dressed and taken her tool belt.

"Screwdriver." She handed it over and he quickly removed the front panel. With the panel off, he could see and smell the burnt circuits. He closed his eyes, slowly exhaled and slumped onto the floor.

Amelia came closer. Her nose twitched.

"Is that coffee?" She noted the blackened components on the exposed circuit boards. "How bad?"

"The computer shorted and purged the drives and the main reactor."

Amelia slumped on the floor next to him.

"That's ..."she paused. "Bad."

"Ever so slightly."

Voices in the corridor. Angry. They were always angry. A group of women entered, gasped in shock when they saw Mannie's state of undress.

"Amelia you poor girl, did the pig try to rape you?"

"What! No!"

"Why is the power off?" Demanded another of the oestrogenic gaggle. Mannie turned to look at the women.

"Because there is an issue with the main reactor. Who was drinking coffee in here?"

"Can you fix it?"

"Probably not. Who was drinking coffee in here?"

"Why can't you fix it?"

"Because I don't know where it is. Who was drinking coffee in here?"

"Why don't you know where it is?"

"Because I don't. Who was drinking coffee in here?"

"Can Amelia fix it?"

"Just answer my God damn fucking question! Who was drinking fucking coffee in here!"

"I'll not be spoken to in that fashion!"

"No. I can't fix it."

"It was Karen."

Mannie groaned. "Of course it would be her... " He climbed to his feet and walked over to the navigation console.

"I will be writing to your employer about your continued state of undress in my presence!"

Mannie activated the navigation console, set it to scan for nearby planetary bodies. Amelia came to stand next to him.

"Does it know where we are?"

"It's on emergency power, so it's running at ten percent capability. Unfortunately we need the power of the main reactor to power the sensor dishes. Without the dishes were restricted to the optical telescopes."

"That's not much."

"No it's not. It'll take hours to scan nearby space and hours to process the data and search the navigation logs for a match. Most likely we are in unmapped space. If I turn off the power to everything we can do without, short term, like the heating and the air scrubbers, I can re-route the power to navigation speed things up a bit, possibly extend the range of the sensors a little. It won't be much though."

"How long have we got?"

"A week or so. Depends if something else breaks down."

"What if we put all non-essential personal into cryo Mannie?"

"We don't have the power to do that Amelia. The emergency reactor is just that. It's not designed to be run any length of time. A week and the chances of it running for longer without issues. Well, let's just say they are not good. If it conks out, things start thawing..."

Amelia thought of all the women in the hold, frozen in stasis.

***

Florence and her fellows were half way to the medbay when the lights went out and the emergency lighting came on. They shared worried looks but continued to escort Karen to the medbay, where they were met by Doctor Helene' Issac.

"I can't do it" Dr Issac told them bluntly.

"What do you mean, 'You can't do it'?"

"The reactor is down. The backup only has enough power to keep existing pods in stasis. Not enough for the freezing process."

"How long till it's back up?"

"I've messaged Mannie. Still waiting for a reply. If the reactor is down, I won't expect a reply anytime soon. He will have his hands full, no doubt, trying to fix the fault."

Karen had a wide smug face. "Well, in that case, no point in me hanging around here, is there?"

They watched her leave and disappear from view.

"Fuck."

***

Mannie and Amelia sat together in the canteen. Both of them wrapped up in every scrap of clothing they could wear and still move. Both of them picking at their food.

"What are our options. Realistically, Mannie?" Her voice projected a white cloud across the room.

Mannie took a bite of food, more to have an excuse in which to delay answering.

"Well, we could put her in a stationary orbit around one of the planets. But when the aux fails and it will fail. There will be no heating, no oxygen. A week after it fails, this ship will be a tomb."

"Can we send an SOS beacon out?"

"Automatically done when the drives were purged. Except it would have been launched In warp and it could have come out of warp anywhere. Even if it exited in inhabited space, there is no means for them to locate us. We could send out a radio burst. But it might be a millennia before it's picked up."

"How about landing her?"

"She's an interplanetary space craft, Amelia. Gravity and atmosphere would tear her apart."

"So, fucked if we do, fucked if we don't?"

"Basically."

"Shit."

"We have a few days to come up with something. After that.." Mannie shrugged.

***

"What can you tell me about B463, A148 and M279?"

Amelia looked up at Mannie from the servo she was repairing. He was serious. This used to annoy her at the start of the journey. The perpetual questions, the continual testing. He was always calm about it. Never raising his voice. If she was ever wrong, and it had been every time at the start, he would calmly tell her why she was wrong in a way that always, annoyingly, made sense, once her anger had calmed down and she had thought about it.

She didn't know the moment when realisation hit. It had been gradual, sneaking up on her. That fact alone, had annoyed her intensely. She had been happy that she was finally answering his never ending questions. Thought he would finally stop. But no. He moved on to technical aspects she had veered away from in technical school. Subjects and processes she had deemed too technical for her.

She knew her limits.

At first, she had simply said "I never trained for that. It wasn't my subject." 'not my job' spoken quietly in the privacy of her mind. And he would reply in his calm voice.

"Give it your best shot."

I wasn't as if she had anything better to do. She had considered the question, then gave it her best shot. He would nod calmly and correct the parts that were wrong, explaining why they were wrong.

Then one night, she had been mulling over one of her many wrong answers and the answer that had been given and two things had struck her simultaneously. The first being that she hadn't been far from the right answer, the second that it had been on a facet of ship engineering she had always shied away from and had long believed to have been well beyond her ability.

She had heard of 'Eureka' moments. Never believed such moments existed. But that moment in her bunk had been a revelation. Up till that moment, she had secretly despised him. Loathed his condescending remarks. And yet, all the time he had been calmly, subtlety, giving her the mental tools to be better at her job, and she hadn't noticed. Hadn't understood. Totally misread his intentions.

It was all intensely annoying.

Partly because she had been wrong and partly because her thoughts and behaviour humiliated her. She had thought that she was better than that. And the realisation that she had not been...

Amelia took down one of the hard copy schematic books, laid it out on the workbench, opened up the front and unfolded the front page which was also the index. It was a structural schematic. She tracked down the rooms. With Mannie, it was going to be something plain and obvious. It wasn't going to be what the rooms were, or what they were used for. She noted the corresponding page numbers on the overall schematic. She leafed through to the correct pages. Tried to work out what they all had in common.

"They are all structural confluences?"

The little smile that used to annoy her so much, appeared on his face. "I want you in A148, Josh in M 279 and Jeremy in B463."

Flicking between the three separate schematics in the heavy tome, she studied the three rooms. A1 appeared to be the most secure, B4 the least, though B4 was still stronger than almost every other room on the freighter.

"You are going to land her." He nodded. "Where are you going to be?"

That gentle smile again.

"Well, someone's got to crash her, haven't they?" Mannie's radio crackled

: Mannie. I'm struggling with the scrubber :

Mannie's hand went to his shoulder and the speaker/microphone there "I will be right there Jeremy." He looked at her. "I want the three of you to start prepping the rooms with tie-down points, and fill them with cushioning. Prep for emergency crash harnesses and start loading supplies. Make sure the supplies are secured to survive a crash. You don't want anything bouncing around in there. Makes for a bad day all round."

As Mannie left the engineering office, shutting the hatch behind him, Amelia looked back down at the schematics. If those three rooms were the strongest, then the Bridge was the inverse. The ship had never been designed, nor built for planetary landing. She doubted it was even possible. It was a starship, not an atmospheric shuttle. The cockpit/bridge was the closest room to the exterior hull. It even had a small window out into space. One of only three rooms in the entire ship to do so.

The sob was unexpected. It came from nowhere. Once it was out, the tears flowed along with a wail that felt as though it emanated from her soul. Sniffling, she closed the book and put it way, heading down to her allotted room.

Ooh, I like it. More please!

Not only is 'Karen' a Karen but Florence is pretty Kareny too.

Only one man on board. Are Josh and Jeremy female?

AJ

The women were all in a meeting. Again. It's all they seemed to do. Talk. Amelia placed the bracket on the floor, her visor darkening as the arc fused the bracket edge to the floor. This would be the last one. They never asked her to attend. Not that she would have done so. How could so many supposedly intelligent women be so stupid.

It seemed to Amelia, that the more women you put in a room, the lower the overall room IQ became. It certainly became noisier. A lot to be said. None of it of any use. They treated Mannie like shit. Always had. Josh and Jeremy the same. As though they, the men, were one breath away from raping them.

The fact that both boys were repulsed by women was neither here nor there.

Amelia in their myopic eyes, was a pseudo man. A turncoat. One who fraternised with the enemy. Amelia had taken the job, that of trainee ships engineer, because she needed it. Needed the experience on an otherwise empty resume'.

There was not a day went by where she regretted the decision and that was before the accident.

Now it was a struggle just to be civil. She tried to change her thoughts. Just thinking about her employers raised her blood pressure and would make her irritable unless she focused on something else. The jury rigged crash couches were ready, the cargo nets and restraints awaiting their cargo.

She knew what was needed in those cargo nets, but she wasn't in charge. No doubt she would be surrounded by clothes, romance novels, musical instruments and painting materials.

Ugh, don't get started on the 'paintings'. Think of something else Amelia...

She had created better works of art in the toilet bowl after some really dodgy cooking.

: Amelia? :

She opened her coms. "Go ahead Mannie."

: Can you meet me in the workshop, please? :

"On my way."

Mannie was standing at the workbench. A printout spread out across the table.

"Pull up a pew, I need your Input." Amelia looked at the opened out paper. It was a surface map.

"With what?" she asked as she dragged over a stool and sat on it.

"Entry angle. I want something not too steep, so that we don't hit the water and instantly pancake. But not too shallow that we skip across the water like a skimming stone till we hit something solid, and then pancake."

"Fuck me, they finally agreed a landing spot then?" His silence was telling "Okay, where have you chosen?"

"This island here. It's only three kilometres away from the mainland and the water between is shallow. Almost to the sea floor at low tide. It has a peak. Probably an extinct volcano, that should provide safety during storms. Going by what limited scans I was able to do, it looks fairly temperate"

"Where do you want to land?"

"Here." He stabbed a forefinger down. "On the seaward side. I want to create a large bow wave that will slow us down and hopefully put us out at the same time."

Amelia was always finding herself continually impressed at Mannie's positivity. The women were all arguing for a full on land landing. They just couldn't agree as to where. The fact that the New Hope had no atmospheric capacity, let alone actual landing capacity, just never registered with the women. As far as the women were concerned, Mannie knew nothing. It was as simple as that in their eyes. Amelia herself, was more of the opinion that as soon as they hit atmosphere, they were going to be one big spectacular fireworks display in the sky. For about 3 minutes.

The only thing that was going to be landing, was carbon dust. She would happily be proved wrong on that score.

"I know nothing about atmospheric insertion!"

"It's just math. We have, what, eighty thousand tons, coming in at eighteen thousand miles an hour, that needs to stop here, without there being a very big hole. I also want you to have a look at the cargo manifest when you have a free moment."

"Umm, why?"

"A hypothetical question, to keep your mind busy. You have some environmental capacity in a ship that's about to land where there is a good chance those in cryosleep are not going to survive the landing. Say, an interruption to their power feed."

"Oookkaayyy…. How many are we talking about, and I take it there are some other parameters in this exercise?"

"Yes. Aim for, say fifty. No one younger than eighteen. They are not yet fully developed or physically robust enough. The inverse, say thirties, no one past thirty five. Too old, to infirm, beyond fertility. In fact, anyone that is infertile treat as 'good, but not good enough'. No one with existing medical conditions that require long term medication. Out of the potential list, sort by trade. Medical staff, any geologists, chemists…"

"The sort of person you would really need on an unknown planet….?"

"Yes. A balance though, don't fill it full of doctors or geologists, you want a wide academical range with a little leeway…"

"Bottom?"

"Painters, poets, dancers, lawyers, accountants…."

"There are a lot of painters and poets on board…"

"Makes the potential final list easier then, doesn't it?" He slid over a notepad and a pen. "Here, you might need it."

***

Amelia collapsed into her bunk, absolutely shattered. It wasn't a physical exhaustion. It was a mental one. Ten minutes later, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bunk. She needed to stop the numbers in her head, focus on something else. She lifted the notepad, flicking past the pages and pages of neatly written calculations followed by neat lists of names and professions until she reached virgin whiteness. She flipped back, ripped out her final list of names. She would leave that on the bench in Engineering. Best to not let any of the women see that.

She started with a list of the heat resistant equipment and stores that she knew they had. It was a depressingly short list. The women - most of whom were in cryo sleep in the hold - who had financed the journey, had skimped severely with their equipment. Food, medicine, clothes and a staggeringly large amount of wine, they had. Technical and industrial equipment? Not so much.

Which was a bit surprising given their original destination had been a virgin planet. Amelia was sure they had been warned, and given her interactions with the ones not asleep, the people warning them had probably been male, which made their advice ignorable. Amelia dragged her attention back to the task at hand. They had two thermal suits, mostly for fighting fires. She could make one thicker suit out of the two. There was a light diving suit. Its purpose was for sewer pipe inspection, and had been used several times for that very function and no matter how many times it was hosed down, the smell still lingered. She could use that as liner. They had some thermal conductive fluid. Top up for their reactor drive that had been unintentionally vented the previous week.

She could repurpose one of their remaining heat exchangers, run pipe work up to the bridge, or re plumb some of the existing pipework, plug it into the suit. Possibly at the ankles, in one, out the other, to help promote circular flow throughout the suit. It was going to be ugly, but this whole fucking disaster of a trip was ugly.

Now that she had a plan and rough suit design in mind, her brain had calmed enough to let her sleep.

The buzzer from her wrist watch roused her from her deep slumber. Something nasty had sprung a leak into her mouth and her eyes were gritty. She needed coffee and something unhealthy and
full of calories. Amelia staggered out of her bunk into the corridor, heading in the direction of the galley.

Somebody was very unhappy. Several some bodies. The was only one other in the galley. Josh.

"What the fuck is that racket?"

"Mannie decided to thaw some of our ice cubes. Quite a few actually."

"Ohhh..."

"By the time They noticed what he was doing, it was too late to reverse the process. So umm, They are kinda stuck with his choices."

"Ohhh..."

"Yeah, he's not exactly flavour of the month."

"Was he ever Josh?" Josh waved his spoon at her, acknowledging her point. "So what's the issue?"

"Oh, the expected ones, Amelia. They hadn't discussed who was going to be thawed, who was going to be on the committee to decide who was thawed. Who was going to chair the committee..."

"There isn't time for that bullshit! We land, one way or another, in a few days!"

"You know that, I know that. Mannie certainly fucking knows that. Personally, I think he waited longer than he should have done."

"Did you want the responsibility Josh?"

"Fuck no! You?"

Amelia had to try really hard to keep what she had already eaten down. "Fuck no."

But maybe she was responsible. She would know once she saw who had been thawed. She tried not to think about that. Something else to ruin her sleep in the future. However long that would be.

"What have you got on today Josh?"

"Anything that keeps me away from that racket. You?"

Amelia listened to the distant steaming for a moment. "Same. I was thinking of making a thermal suit and hooking it up to one of the heat exchangers."

"You want a hand?"

"No, it's okay." She paused, thought about the time they had left, soon to be hours rather than days. "Actually, yes. I don't suppose you are any good at clothes making?"

"That's a bit fucking judgementally stereotypical Amelia..."

"Don't tell me that I'm sat opposite the one gay man in the universe who's not interested in clothing."

"Well, luckily for you..."

***

It was going to be ugly, but it if it did the job...

Amelia looked down at the suit parts spread out across the table. Josh was steadily sewing spacers into the thermal suit, creating a gap between the shitsuit and the exterior thermal one. Annoyingly, he had really neat stitches.

"Don't they ever run out of breath?" They could still hear shouting in the distance, as it echoed along the corridors.

"At least we know he is still alive Josh."

"Do you think they have cottoned on to the fact that we are not landing where they want?"

" I refer you back to my previous response..."

"How are you doing?" Josh asked.

"Me or the suit?"

"You."

"Oh, you know. Absolute terror and torrential tears if I give my brain a minute to think. How about you and Jeremy?"

Josh shrugged. "The sex the last few days has been fucking amazing."

"Fuck like you're about to die."

"Pretty much." He agreed. They lapsed into silence

"Well, that killed the conversation."

***

The ship was scarily quiet. Freakishly so. Apart from the squeak from one of the wheels of the small trolley she was pulling. In it, lay the modified suit, helmet, a small fluid pump and twenty five litres of coolant in a plastic drum. Mannie was in the pilots chair in the bridge, bits of paper covered in notes everywhere. Two women were stood watching him.

Unfortunately, one of them was Karen. He looked up. "You should be ensuring your group is secured and be securing yourself."

"I will do. I made you something."

"That was nice of you. Atmospheric thrusters and a set of landing gear by any chance?"

"Umm, no."

"That's a pity. What did you get me?" His eyes travelled over the trolley.

"A well disguised ruse to get you to wear the shitsuit."

"Ooo.. Christmas has come early."

Amelia started to unpack the trolley, handing him the modified thermal suit.

"You weren't joking about the shitsuit."

"Why am I not getting a suit!" Karen demanded.

"What the fuck are you even doing here Karen? You're not even flight qualified?" Amelia was fed up of her shit.

"As the representative of.."

"I don't fucking care Karen." She turned to Mannie, "Hurry up and put it on."

"Amelia, you know it, the suit, won't last…"

"I fucking know!" A quaver had come from somewhere, unwantedly invading her voice. She wiped an eye. "That suit stinks. Makes your eyes water. I don't care about you, but the longer you last, the closer we get to ground. Now shut up and get it on. Karen you need get bellow. Actually no, fuck it, stay here and burn to death."

"How dare you speak to me like that! I shall..."

"Just Ignore her Amelia."

"I don't have your patience Mannie. Now, get your boots off." She helped him into the suit, ensuring the seal around his neck was good. Amelia plugged the pump into one of the auxiliary ports in the bridge, placed the suction end into the coolant drum and the pump outflow into the connector on his back between his shoulders. He shivered as she turned the pump on.

"That's cold."

"Of course it's fucking cold, it's refrigerant. Jiggle about a bit, try to get the air to the top."

Mannie jiggled about as Amelia stuck a finger down his neck seal. The air escaping sounded like a wet fart. She laughed.

"Sounds like you need new underwear Mannie."

"That's disgusting."

"Fucks sake Karen! Are you still here! We'll be hitting atmosphere in less than an hour."

"I think we should go Karen..." The other woman was looking visibly nervous.

Amelia pulled out one of the pipe coils and plugged one end into his heel.

"Keep jiggling." she said as she unrolled the coil, plugging the free end into a hull socket she had rerouted. The other pipe she connected to his right heel, unspooling the rest of it. "Now this might get chilly." She plugged the end in, creating a circuit as she violently shook the pipes to agitate the contents, hoping to disperse any air pockets. Another finger in the collar until liquid jetted out as well. "Jiggle again."

He jiggled. Another finger in his collar. No air.

"Okay." She turned off the pump and disconnected the pipe from his shoulders. "Sit." He sat and
she carefully placed the helmet over his head, locking the seal into place. He was starting to shake in the chair as she draped the restraints into place over his shoulders and connected them across his chest.

The bridge had started to tremble slightly.

"Go! Run! We are out of time Amelia!" His voice was muffled, but audible behind the thick crystal visor. She gave him a hurried once over. Everything was as good as it was going to be. She dragged the empty trolley into the corridor outside of the bridge, shut the hatch and abandoned the trolley as she ran back to her station. The vibrations were really bad by then and it was challenging to marry up her own restraints. Several of the women were already crying. Fuck, the vibrations were bad. She hadn't thought about, or allowed for that. She was going to have some serious chafe marks for sure.

Ten minutes and it would be all over. One way or the other.

The crying had become screaming. It sounded like everyone. Amelia joined in, then stopped. It was
the only control she had, and she clung to it resolutely, keeping her mouth shut. It was starting to get noticeably hotter. In the air and in the bulkhead behind her. Her view went funny, as though they were turning. No. They actually were turning.

Slowly at first, then faster. It was not a bad thing, she tried to tell herself. This way, the hull would be heated evenly. The spin was speeding up. The ship had nothing to stop it. There was a lot of creaking and groaning amongst the increasing roar. And the occasional sharp, extremely loud, 'ping'.

That was probably them losing hull plates.

There was a tearing crashing sound and the roar increased markedly. This was it, then. They'd lasted longer than expected. The old girl had been stronger than she looked.

***

Mannie focused on the screen. There was not much he could do really.

Tweak the manoeuvring thrusters to make small changes to their trajectory, for as long as he was able. They were still on course and it looked as though he might succumb to hypothermia before they broke up. His body was trembling violently in an effort to keep his core temperature up. Which made it challenging to input the correct adjustments into the keyboard in front. His arms and legs were already starting to go numb. His white paper notes around him started to go brown, then black.

The vibrations were making it hard to read the screen in front of him. And then it went black. Not unexpected. The plastic keyboard started to lose shape, then it was on fire, the keys sticking to his fingertips. Lacking his adjustments, the roll started to increase in speed. His inner ear rebelled.

Mannie resisted the temptation to throw up. He didn't want to drown in his helmet.

There was nothing he could do now. The flames spread and he had stopped shivering. It was quite comfortable. If you could ignore the noise. Idly, he wondered if this was what hell was like. He was starting to get warm now.

This had been such a shit idea, and all for what?

Too late now.

He closed his eyes, relaxed in the crash couch. Closing his eyes was worse. He opened them again. All he could see was swirling flame. It was remarkably pretty, soothing in an eyeball meltingly way.

At what point did he release his helmet clasp? The spinning wasn't helping.

I bet we look impressive as fuck from the ground.

That was if there was anything to witness their demise. The heat in the suit was becoming unbearable. It was time. He tensed the muscles to raise his hands to his neck.

***

Amelia wondered how long you could scream for. Her throat was already hurting from her own, brief, release of terror. She gasped, taking in deep lungful's of air that was steadily getting hotter. Several of the women had gone silent. It was pitch black, the lights having gone out, no doubt a result of parts of the ship burning away. She reached up to her shoulder, to turn on the light that was integral to her suit. The narrow bright beam lanced into the darkness. Bodies slumped in their harnesses. Several of them had thrown up, the mess cascading down their fronts, adding an acrid tang to the increasingly hotter air.

A hard jolt threw her against her restraints. The sickening spin slowing down. The pressure squeezing her tight against the harness didn't relent. There was a deafening screech of metal and for a moment, it felt as though they had speeded up. The vibrations were easing off. As was the pressure against her chest.

So was the noise. The spin stopped, leaving her and the other women upside down. Her ears were ringing, the room still reverberating to screams.

"Give it a fucking rest will you!" Amelia called out, to no avail as she rubbed her eyes. Carefully releasing her harness, she used her weight and gravity to swing herself back upright into the woman next to her.

"Sorry." Not that the unconscious woman noticed that she was being used as the rungs on a makeshift ladder "Sorry." The next woman was conscious, but looked spaced out. She climbed down over her. The next woman was conscious and screaming. Amelia slapped her hard across the
face as she continued her descent. "Sorry, but not really."

It was weird standing upright on the ceiling. It was hard trying to process it all. Thankfully the screams were petering out. Amelia moved over to her gear and winced when it clattered to the ceiling when she released the straps. Grabbing the bag she needed, she rummaged in it to find the dosimeter. She turned it on, waited for the reading. It was not great. She turned to some of the more aware members of the room.

"Start helping each other down, grab as much as you can and look for an exit. The back ground radiation is elevated, so make it snappy."

Amelia clutched onto the wall, her head telling her the room was still spinning. She leaned against the wall as she donned her tool belt. She knew the dizziness would pass, eventually. She looked back, the beam of light from her inspection torch swinging through the darkness almost made her throw up.

"Hurry up! Start getting your arses into gear!" A few more beams of light speared into existence, their wildly erratic nature not helping. Amelia grabbed her most important luggage and walked over to the hatchway. With no power, it needed manually opening. She cranked it just enough to slip through, tripping over the ledge her muscle memory insisted wasn't there. A few steps further and a light fitting sent her painfully onto her hands and knees.

"For fucks sake!" Keeping an eye on the screen of the dosimeter, she headed to the bridge. Three floors away from her destination, her journey was blocked by twisted metal, rock and water.

The weight of the New Hope was always going to crush the floors closest to the planetary surface.

"I'm sorry Mannie. You saved us, but I couldn't save you.. I'm sorry." She placed her hand in the water, resting it against the mix of seafloor and wreckage, the closest she was ever realistically going to get to what had once been the bridge. "I'm sorry."

A wary eye on the dosimeters readings, she searched for a viable way off the wreckage. Lots of shouts and complaints echoed along the dark corridors. The sooner she was off the better. Was that light?

The corridor was showing signs of extreme stress. Panels bowed and buckled. It was indeed light. Darkness made way for a sight of twisted wreckage, lapping water and the sight of land. The air tasted different. Obviously it was breathable. In the short term at least.

She rummaged in a bag again for a pair of gloves and a marker pen. She made her way back to the haven, drawing large arrows as she went. Inside they were indeed working hard to lower each other down onto the ceiling.

"I found an exit, follow the arrows." She picked up the last of meagre possessions and retraced her steps yet again to the breach. Making sure her bags were as water tight as she could get them, she carefully made her way down the wreckage. The parts above her still radiated intense heat, the parts she carefully navigated, were burned clear of paint and coatings, displaying their intense heat and sudden cooling in a mosaic of blues, lilacs and purples. Steam still meandered into the air.

The water was murky, full of churned up seafloor. She rummaged in one of her bags, took a sample of the water, tested it. A little more acidic than what was to be found on Earth. She didn't have access to equipment that could warn her of any biological threats. All she had was her eyes, common sense and a shit ton load of luck that she may, or may not have.

Though after that landing, her supply of luck must be pretty sparse.

Easing herself into the water, she carefully made her way down the wreckage. Her feet found what might be seafloor. It wasn't that deep, just up to her shoulders. Her bags floating around her head, she used bits of the craft to pull herself through the water heading towards the beach.

She staggered up the sand, dropping her bags as soon as she was clear of the water. Somewhat disappointingly, the vegetation, what was left of it, looked very much Earth like. All the trees near the water's edge had been pushed over, very much like a tidal wave had swept onto the island.

Which is what had just happened.

"Mannie, you were a fucking genius. I wish you were here to see how bang on you were."

"Amelia! Amelia!"

Amelia turned back to the ship. A distant figure was waving at her from a different part of the ship from the part she had exited. It look liked Josh.

"Is that you Josh?"

"It is! Was that fucking wild or what! What's the water and the beach like?"

"The water is a little acidic and the beach is, well, beachy. I recorded an uplift in backgrounded radiation in the ship. One of the reactor fuel containers must be damaged."

"Shit! I didn't think to check!"

"Have you heard from Jeremy?"

"Yeah! He's alive, but the corridors have collapsed between us, I thought I would try to reach him via the exterior. I don't know how many of them are still alive. I lost a few. Some luggage came loose, pin balled, and, yeah it was not pretty. How about you?"

"I think they all made it. A few broken limbs and if they can make to the beach without drowning, then all good."

"How's the bridge?"

"Gone. And the three levels beneath."

"Shit. I'm sorry Amelia."

"It is what it is…"

"Amelia?" An unknown face was staring at her from where she must have exited the craft.

"Josh, get yours out now, then go and look for Jeremy. The radiation is not good." She looked to the new face. "Sorry, who are you? What is your trade?"

"Bertice. I'm a dentist. Where are we, what's going on. No one's told me anything since I awoke from freeze sleep yesterday…"

"Time for that later Bertice. I need you to get all the women and what they can carry out of that room as soon as possible, get them on the beach."

"The radiation?"

"Yes, the radiation. Hurry now, if anyone is still unconscious, you will have to carry them." Amelia walked further along the beach, peering into the tangle of collapsed trees, their exposed pulled up roots adding to the visual obstruction. In the distance, peeking above the foliage of the trees that had managed to stay upright during the tsunami, was the peak of what Mannie had said was likely to be an old, hopefully dormant, volcano.

Mannie.

She turned back to the wreckage of the spacecraft. She had walked a fair bit along the beach and could see more if it's length. The craft was literally half its length. Which stunned her. Being upside down, complicated the mental image of the ship when it had been complete, that she was trying to overlay over what actually rested in front of her. Almost all the exterior plating had been burned away, along with the closest levels. The sight brought home just how close they had been to annihilation. It looked like the craft had sheared where the drive reactors had blown out. There would have a been a large hole in the hull where they had been. That would have been a weak point and when they hit water, that hole would have acted as a scoop. Slowing then down, until the pressure ripped away the weakened struts.

"Oh fuck…."

She scanned the horizon, hoping to see a hump of wreckage breaking the surface of the unknown sea which would tell her the other half's location. There was no hump. That half, had all their pioneer supplies, and even worse, all the women who had not been roused from their cryo sleep.

Dead.

They would all be dead now. No power to feed the chambers. And depending on the depth that half of the ship had had sunk to, no means of even trying to see if somehow some had survived and could be retrieved.

Thousands of women dead.

And all the frozen sperm embryos were in that half.

A colony doomed to slowly die out.

"Fuck…"

Dejectedly, she headed back to the growing huddle of woman on the beach. Amelia spotted a face she at least knew."

"Evelyn, did you get all the women out of our room?"

"No." Evelyn looked a bit traumatised.

"No?"

"Belinda passed."

"Dead? How?"

"Marjorie said it looked like a heart attack."

"It was probably for the best…"

Evelyn gave her a sharp look , but Amelia decided not to elucidate. Evelyn looked like she was hanging on to her sanity by the thinnest of threads as it was.