"Stasis" (closed to TiredFingers)

Fourteen was dead...

Or, at the least, its mission was.

Deep Space Transport Revival (DST-14) -- or Fourteen as most of the crew called the ship -- was 38 years into its three century long trek to 51 Pegasi IV, aka New Terra, when it passed through a vast debris field that hadn't been detected in time to avoid it. Dozens of pieces of space dust struck the hull at nearly 195,000 kilometers per second, 65 percent of the speed of light which had been Fourteen's speed at the time.

The Nanobot Hull Sealing System had closed most of the holes within just three minutes, as designed. With the compartment pressure doors closed, as was normal, there was little loss of pressure and little loss of the all important oxygen on which the crew and passengers relied.

But there was significant damage to the ship, including the explosive blowout of an entire stasis pod compartment, resulting in the loss of 124 settlers and 24 crew.

But the damage that would likely see the mission end in failure was the damaging -- in some cases destruction -- of 4 of the ship's 6 main engines. Without at least 4 working engines, Fourteen wouldn't be able to conduct an all important course correction in a year's time. Without the course correction, Fourteen's 1,800 passengers and 180 crew -- most of whom were still in stasis -- would continue out into uncharted space for centuries, possibly millennia, without ever having known about the tragedy.

The pods would eventually run out of the resources necessary to keep their occupants alive … and the pods would then become coffins.

This was the situation to which Alice Hooper found herself being reanimated from stasis. She knew there was an emergency the moment her brain returned to being able to hold a coherent thought because across the inside of her pod's casing was the flashing phrase, EMERGENCY REANIMATION PROCEDURE IN PROCESS/Please remain calm

It they'd wanted Alice to remain calm, the pod's designers shouldn't have created the pods to give her the tragic headline without any details to explain the story. Even at Emergency Reanimation speed, it still took 6 hours for the pod to open and allow the antsy Electrician's Mate, 2nd Class, to get the hell out.

What was even worse than seeing the message was then not being able to see it. The chemicals injected into the body to conclude the reanimation process caused temporary blindness, a condition the Med Staff playfully called Solo Syndrome after some character in a 20th century Earth motion picture.

Because of this condition, Alice didn't actually see the lid of the pod opening. Instead, she heard the servos and then felt the rush of cool air upon her skin, which -- with her in nothing but her birthday suit -- meant all of her skin.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," a familiar voice said from a not too distant location. "Don't move until I can get those tubes out of you."

Alice felt a woman's soft hands upon her, first calming her with soft touch and words, then pulling up and out of her belly and esophagus the tubes that had been both filling and emptying her belly to reintroduce it to food after 38 years of experiencing none.

After the tubes were out and she'd swallowed down some of the nasty liquid that had come up with it, Alice managed to ask, "Hanna...?"

"It's me," Hanna Vicks said as she maneuvered Alice to a sitting position on the edge of the pod. She instructed, "Lean forward."

"Why?" Alice asked, just before she felt her stomach retch and send up most of the contents of her stomach. She could hear the thick liquids and chunks splashing into a container before her and realized suddenly why Hanna had wanted her to lean forward.

"Feel better?" the Medic asked after a series of expulsions. Even though Alice didn't respond one way or the other, Hanna still said, "Good. Good, you're doing good and feeling better."

"What's going on...?" Alice finally managed after her stomach had stopped rebelling against the reanimation process. "Why are we--"

A male voice cut in, "I think maybe I should explain that, Petty Officer."

Alice closed her eyes in disappointment, not that she'd been able to see anything anyway. Having Hanna Vicks reanimated and on her Duty Shift was a surprise to Alice, but at least it was a happy one. Having this particular Command Officer supervising the Shift would not have been Alice's first choice.