Defrost Thoroughly

Posted on Sat Apr 14th, 2018 @ 2:02am by Captain Remas McDonald & Master Warrant Officer Tsabina

1,385 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: S1:2: Rubicon
Location: Cryo Bay 2, Deck 10
Timeline: MD 14, 11.15PM

"...manual release is stuck...Yeah, I tried hitting it, look just give me the pry bar will ya?"

The pod rocked as it was struck, a dull sound in the cold interior as the glass panel that covered the front of the pod flashed with light. Holographic overlay's appeared on the glass, blinking with reds and oranges, as the sharp lines of an EKG began to worm across it. Outside the pod people in padded sterile suits hurried about, whilst two of them hunt off the side of the pod pulling on a prybar.

"Hey! Dr Kuan?" one of them said, their face misted by frost and holographic back wash. They rapped the glass against with their fist. "If you can hear me open your eyes for me!"

There had a wall of darkness that cut her off from everything, darkness surrounded by the edges of real panic. Her eyelids fluttered, struggling against that feeling of being ... trapped. Her heartbeat sped up and it felt as though it were flinging itself against her ribcage in an effort to escape. Furrows appeared in her forehead as she fought her way upward from the depths, from nothing, and sought to make some semblance of sense of what was going on. She fought without moving and finally opened her eyes, ever so slightly.

"We have movement!" the person beyond the glass said, turning to look at the others. "Puck put your back into it and pod the lid now!"

They turned back to Kuan and smiled.

"Dr Kuan you're absolutely fine! I need you to remain as calm as possible whilst we get the lid off the pod! Can you recite your full name and position on the Traveller?" the person asked. From her side, something let out a snapping sound.

She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, on at least the pretense of calm, and said softly, "Alice ... Alice Kuan. I'm ... archaeology and ..." She took a shuddering breath and added, "bioanthropology."

"Okay, that's great! Now, where were you born and when were you born?" the voice asked. The cracking sound came again, along with an excessive amount of vile threats levied at the Ingram nanoScale Systems whose cryopods were utter crap. The figure rapped the glass again.

"Dr Kuan, place of birth and year please?" the voice asked, looking off to the side. "Tsabina can you help Puck get the lid off before he breaks it more?"

The urge formed, almost a need, to beat against this prison if she could move ... which she couldn't ... and that was ... bad. She glared in the theoretical direction of whoever was plaguing her but answered, "2359 on Earth." The question of where specifically occupied the hazy space that had once been an active mind for a moment or two. An image surfaced of sandstone pillars wreathed in clouds. "Near Zhangjiajie originally."

A plaintive 'ow!' arose from outside as with a hydraulic hiss the pod door began to rise up...before grinding to a halt. More cursing hollowed, but with the door mostly off, it was the work of seconds for hands to reach in and pull it free.

"I tell you straight, these Ingram cryo caskets are death traps every one! I tell the folks at the yard this, and all I hear is how reliable they are, how good they are," a squat man in an insulated medical scrub gestured to Kuan. "Case in point we nearly had our big thinker here turned into a cucumber!"

"Hey there," a new voice said from the other side, as a light was shone into her eyes. "Welcome to the outside of the Milky Way. We made it Doctor Kuan, you're safe and alright."

"No thanks to Uncle Ingram and his ice cream machines-"

"Puck, shut up or I'll put this light pen so far up your ass your teeth will glow," the nurse shining the light in Kuan's eyes said with a cheery smile.

Alice squinted against the light; movement was returning to her limbs and she felt a profound sense of relief as her body began to obey her brain's frantic instructions to get ... out ... of ... this ... now. "Not alright," she murmured as one, trembling hand reached for the edge of the pod. "Cold."

"Don't worry you're gonna feel like that, it's totally normal. Here, this'll help," the nurse said, and lay a bulky silver blanket over her. It began the slow process of warming her. "As per emergency mission directive 5.4, as set out by the Project Longjump Planning Committee before launch, you've been rapidly revived from cryogenic stasis. It's a rough immersion, and I have a cocktail of drugs that are going to take the edge off."

EMD 5.4: In The event of a shipboard emergency resulting in the death of an Awake Department Head, congruent with an ongoing emergency situation, the next available Alternate for that role will be rapid thawed.

"I got the first hypo here. Six CC's of dextrogamate mixed in the requisite saline solution. Should stop the doc from seeing Unicorns and Fairies when the Dextro kicks in," Puck said handing the other person a hypo. "I'll get the mood stabilizer out of the kit for the follow-up."

She burrowed into the blanket, savoring the warmth, and eyed the hypospray with outright hostility, intending to refuse, and then a thought caught her attention. She turned it around in her still sluggish brain, her expression shifting toward thoughtful. "5.4? Tolkath?" Another image bubbled up from the depths, long discussions about logic and philosophy over Vulcan Spice Tea. "What ... happened?"

Tsabina had stood back while her junior nurse administered the hypospray so she could scan the science officer's condition. "Welcome back to the land of the living," she quipped. "Lieutenant Tolkath was among the casualties of an attack which devastated the science labs."

Satisfied with what she saw, Tsabina nodded with a grin and stowed her medical tricorder. "As it is, you will have your work cut out for you, acting Chief Science Officer." She extended her hand downward to the pod in both greeting and assistance. "My name is Tsabina. I'm one of the head nurses, and with the depleted science staff, I've also been tasked with assisting with cataloging and researching any biological samples we come across."

"Thank you," Alice said as she accepted the nurse's help in rising out of the (hated) pod. She climbed out and then stood for a moment, eyes closed as much against the implications as the onslaught of information. The heavy blanket reflected back radiant heat, encapsulating her in warmth, and sped up the process of driving the chill from her body as presumably, did the drugs. "Is there anywhere I need to be?"

"In sickbay, giving one of the pukes in neural imaging something to do other than take selfies of their frontal cortex," Puck said as he came along with the second hypo and stuck her. "There. Ya all happy now? We gone put our new Chief Science Officer on a neural booster, with mood stabilizers to mellow out the mood swings and just a dash of methamphetamine to keep the neurons firing and a slow release adrenaline shot to keep her body from exhausting itself."

He held up the box the the two hypo's had come in, the clear plastic wrapped in a orange hazard stripe.

"'In Case Of Emergency'. What sort of emergency science is there to do?" Puck asked.

"I'm sure I will find out," Alice said while folding up the blanket. She returned the blanket to the nurse, pausing for a moment to think about how she felt. Clearer being the first word that came to mind. "I know that the drugs were necessary. Just ... no more, please."

"Yeah no kidding Doc," Puck said and snapped a monitoring bracelet around her wrist. "That goes off someone in sickbay should be with you in 30 seconds to make sure you're okay or beginning the heroic measures needed to keep you're heart and respiration going."

He then turned, and pushed into her arms a plastic wrapped bundle of replicator fresh clothing, a silvery beverage bag labelled ELECTROLYTES, and an energy bar labelled ENERGY BAR.

Clearly, the advertising budget had been sacrificed for gravity plating and warp coils.

"Now there's ya pack lunch, now scoot."

 

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