"Dark Flight" (The IC Thread)

"Dark Flight"​

(FYI: The female character below is available.)

Hans Decker has begun the 38 hour long reanimation process for Bed 312 just under 34 hours ago. The body of the cryogenic device's inhabitant -- listed as Meagan Brent, 26, Science Instructor -- was by now reanimated from stasis with the important exception that she wasn't yet conscious; Decker's understanding was that she would be in a dream state, with her body and mind sensing but not understanding what was happening about them ... or to them.

Which was precisely what Decker was after. He opened the hatch to bed, carefully removed Meagan, laid her out gently upon a padded gurney -- face down, with her legs dangling from the hips toward the floor -- cut her jump suit open with a razor knife, and proceeded to rape her. His grunts and, eventually, loud groan of satisfaction echoed off the metal and composite bulkheads of Passenger Cryo Bay Four just forward of the massive, passenger transport's Engineering Section.

Expended, he lay atop her body, his wet erection lying between the firm cheeks of her still slightly cool ass. When the euphoria had waned, he sat up a bit and gently caressed Meagan's back and buttocks ... before intruding upon her personal privacy until, once again, his cries of ecstasy filled the otherwise silent passageway.

He cleaned Meagan between her thighs and, more enjoyable, her pink lips, then stripped the ripped jumpsuit off her, put a replacement one on her, and transferred the Velcro-attached name tag to her chest. He returned her to the cryo-bed and adjusted the settings; he wasn't putting her back into deep sleep but instead was only keeping her in the dream state until he was ready to take her out for more personal release.

But Decker had made two tragic errors...

First, he hadn't realized that Meagan had hidden a very special trinket in the jump suit he'd discarded, despite the procedure against such sentimental acts. When she did in fact reanimate fully, she would -- might -- eventually realize that the suit she'd gone into stasis with wasn't the one she'd exited wearing.

And second, he'd readjusted the bed's setting incorrectly, forgetting to reset the timer to Hold. In just under four hours, when her reanimation was to have been completed ... it would be!

Meagan was going to awake, alone, in an unlocked cryo-bed, in a jump suit not hers ... with the dreamy nightmare of having been raped ... and the physical prove that her dream just might have been real.



After getting a meal and finishing off the last of the alcohol he'd been brewing in a poorly-engineered still, Decker made his way to PCB-1. This bay was inhabited by ship's crew only, as opposed to the craft's other five bays. He took a moment to review the bio-monitors for a dozen officers, including the Captain, the XO, and the Chief Security Officer. He'd done some adjustments to their cryo-beds before he'd gone to visit Meagan, and he was anxious to see the results of the process which had required hours of crossing circuits, hacking security codes, and disengaging life support systems.

An alarm sounded on the ePad at his waist. He pulled it out, expecting to find some unimportant notice of a ship function which, by design, would likely be automatically corrected or bypassed by a redundant system.

His eyes opened wide, his heart skipping a beat in panic. He ran into the Central Passage and leaped into the Rail Car. He pushed buttons quickly; the small, two man plus cargo cart spun around 180 degrees, simultaneously moving to the track intended for aft travel only. The magnetic coils below the car energized, and with impressive acceleration, it shot down the port side of the RC Shaft, with the pressurization bulkhead doors opening and closing automatically for him.

PC-4 was over a kilometer away, and yet the Rail Car was slowing down at the entrance to it in just under 30 seconds. Decker leaped out before it had come to a stop, stumbling and rolling but returning to his feet with incredible agility. He practically slammed his body against the pressure door, pressing his face to the porthole-style window.

And there she was, standing in the central hall, looking around with apparent confusion for why she was awake and no one else was.

"Oh, Meagan, sweetheart," Decker whispered to himself, "What the hell are you doing awake, Doll...? What the hell ... are you doing ... awake?"

Jupiter Station
Mission Control, New Earth Settlement Program


The woman studied the letters on the ePad she was hiding inside a technical manual. She mumbled to herself, "T, O, O, P, L, I, H, U, S, and E."

"Pilothouse."

Cherie looked up from the ePad at the man lounged back at his monitoring station with his eyes closed and his feet up. She shook her head, asking, "First, how do you do that ... particularly when you're sleeping ... and second, what the hell's a pilot house?"

Martin smiled a bit -- the first movement he'd made in over an hour."I'm not sleeping, I'm resting my eyes. And a pilothouse is like a bridge, only of a water borne boat, not a space borne ship."

"Smarty pants," she mumbled, pressing her finger to the screen and moving the letters around to spell out Martin's answer. She looked back to him -- ogling his perfect face and lean form -- then, smirking as she looked about for eavesdropping Supervisors, said softly, "Try this one ... W, A, N, N, A, F, U--"

Martin burst out laughing, his body lurching so hard he almost tipped his chair over backward. "If the rest of that are the initial for Calvin Klein, I may have to file a sexual harr--"

A sudden alarm cut Martin off, causing him to sit up so quickly that his chair did fall over this time. As he scrambled to his feet, he responded to Cherie's concerned inquiries, "It's bio readouts from Rebirth...!"

He stared at his monitor, then tapped his finger to the screen and reviewed the data coming in.

"This can't be right..."

"What is it...?"

"My god!" Martin said, standing tall and looking about for his Supervisor. He looked back to Cherie and said, "The Captain of the Rebirth ... he's ... he's..."



An hour earlier, when the information had first begun arriving, there had four people in the Command Center Compartment and, maybe, a dozen more somewhere in the Facility. Now, Martin and Cherie were surrounded by every man and woman assigned to the New Earth Program, and the Director -- who'd been in the infirmary for the past six days with an intestinal blockage -- was on a Secondary Monitor at Martin's station, being fed every detail as it came in at multiple times the speed of light.

"Three dead, ma'am," Martin informed the nearly 90 year old woman, whose own son and two daughters were aboard the Rebirth as Crew or Settlers. "The Captain, the Security Chief, and the Assistant Navigation Officer. Nine other cryo-beds are showing malfunctions as well ... Rebirth's Executive Officer is showing alarming stats in--"

"Malfunction...?" the Director cut in. When Martin donned an expression that told her he didn't understand her question, she asked with an already implied answer, "How do you know this is a malfunction and not sabotage?"

Martin stared at her dumbfounded for a moment, then looked back to his monitor as another red light began flashing. "The Electronics Security Officer, ma'am ... he just died."

My god, Martin asked himself silently. Could this really be ... is someone really KILLING these people. Who in their right mind would do something like this...?

Of course, Martin didn't know anything about the research into cryogenic stasis that had shown the slight possibility -- about 3% -- of individuals coming out of stasis with what the researchers had called mental instabilities. He was just a computer tech, after all.