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Journey to Centauri is an episodic tale that details the splintering of the U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission on its way to the new world.

Journey to Centauri : Episode 1

"Captain."

Shapes. Shadows, hovering over him. A sense of threat, darkness eclipsing his vision, and the distant sound of warning klaxons. He tried to lift his hands and could not, tried to speak and felt his throat turn to fire. A deep cold pressed down on him, crushing his bones to ice.

"...this one...hurry" The voice again.

More movement, seen through layers of frost and glass. I am the Captain came his next thought, sharp and coherent. I should be first....

First out of the sleep. Visions returned to him: the long rough cylinder of the ship, floating above the chaos of Earth. The massive cryobays with their rows of sleeping crew, the white-suited cryotechs moving ghostlike among them. His last memory of laying down in glass and feeling the blue tide rise to swallow him, forty years and a moment of darkness ago. Thinking, hoping, that when he woke again, it would be to the sight of Alpha Centauri's primary cresting the rim of a new planet, a new world.

But now...something was wrong. Someone, unauthorized, moving around the ship. A wave of dizziness washed over him and his vision blurred into a sea of blue, red lights flashing in the distance. He could feel the ship shaking beneath him.

"We move..."

A shadow passed over him, and then another. Footsteps retreated. He stared up through the curved top of the cryocell, willing himself into the open spaces of the ship, trying to force his fingers to move. His brain signaled alarm but his heart and muscles, held in near stasis, would not respond.

He waited, helpless, while the ship hurled on and the warning klaxons sounded their three beat sequence.

After interminable moments he heard a click and a hiss, and then a storm exploded beneath him.

Transmission Received,
U.N.S. Unity Central Processor.

Meteor Impact Detected.
Fusion drive shut down.
Severe Damage Hydroponics Mods 2, 3;
cryobay 7.

Triggering automatic wakeup of core staff per coded instructions.

Journey to Centauri : Episode 2

Pravin Lal awakened to the hiss of the transparent capsule door breaking its seal and the feel of the ship's foundation shaking beneath him. His heart began to pound and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply, seeking calm.

When his heartbeat slowed he opened his eyes once more. His training had prepared him for this: disorientation, sleep sickness, a deep fatigue that seemed to nest in his bones. He spit the respirator from his mouth and pulled the IVs from his arm, then lifted his hands, placed them on the glass lid above, and pushed.

The cryocell opened. He was alive.

Around him stretched the expanse of cryobay two, silent and vast, filled with over a thousand identical glass capsules, each one bathed in a pale blue light, each with tubes and cables snaking down to conduits in the floor. Over a thousand crew, but his eyes immediately, reflexively, turned to the cell at his left. He climbed to his feet and, ignoring the chill, crossed to it.

He looked down through the glass. There, beneath the frost and bluish tint of the cryogel, he could make out her soft brown shape, indistinct, and the darkness of her long hair. Pria. She looked so peaceful, so far away...he still remembered her gentleness, and their last strong kiss before the cryotechs closed the cell, locking her away from him.

His practiced eyes scanned the small console above her cell. Everything appeared normal; she had survived. His eyes flickered once across the manual release key, and then he saw the red warning lights flashing at the far end of the cryobay. The ship... he had almost forgotten the danger. He brushed Pria's cell with his fingers one more time and then turned away.

From a metal shelf at the foot of his vacated cell he lifted a folded uniform... sleek, comfortable, in the sky blue of the mission's Chief of Surgery, with the U.N. seal on the breast and no country-of-origin markings visible. The Captain had lobbied strongly for that.

He slipped into the uniform and flipped on the small computer sewn into the uniform's sleeve. Status report: the Captain would emerge from cryosleep shortly, along with the Chief Science Officer and some emergency support staff. It appeared that large portions of the ship's hull had been damaged, along with two of the three hydroponics modules. The fusion drive had shut down.

Pravin entered the Returned to Duty code and headed for the command bay. The ship was racing towards Centauri system at tremendous speed, and without the fusion drive there was no way to stop.

Log Entry Received,
Pravin Lal, Chief of Surgery.

I have awakened to find the mission in jeopardy. I go now to join my Captain in the command bay, ready to learn what has gone awry.

I pray the integrity of the ship's datacore remains true. It is the last hope of humankind...all of our knowledge digitized for transit to the new world. If Earth has not survived these last 40 years, then our future lies in the heart of this damaged ship.

Journey to Centauri : Episode 3

Captain Garland felt the storm of bubbles boil up around him, turning the thick cryogel to liquid. Fiercer now, growing violent, pounding his limbs; clench your teeth on the respirator, feel its cool silver shape in your mouth. He still remembered the training.

The chemical reaction that neutralized the cryogel ended, and he found himself floating in liquid. Small heating coils on the inside of his glass cocoon kicked on to warm the liquid, continuing the process of bringing his body back to life. He sucked air from the respirator, waited for the liquid to drain away.

Long moments passed. How many breaths did the respirator cartridge hold? Not many, he remembered, and the liquid should have drained away by now. A malfunction?

He reached up, put his hands on the top of the cell and pushed. His muscles, partially atrophied despite the electromuscular therapy administered by the ship's computer, groaned in protest. The lid would not open. He felt the cold glass against his palms, unyielding, and felt the liquid around his face.

God waits in heaven, but we are beyond heaven now. The thought rose unbidden into his mind. He pushed again, angry, but the seal would not break.

He drew another breath and choked, felt a pressure in this throat. No more air. He turned in his watery tomb, pressed again. A panic rose inside of him as he felt his chest compress, his diaphragm forcing the last bit of oxygen from his lungs into his system.

Not like this... His hands lashed out, seeking an escape. He could feel his knuckles striking the glass, feel a desperate animal energy howling inside of him, but his prison would not give.

God waits in heaven, but we are beyond heaven now. His vision swam into darkness, and he knew what would follow: a final moment of involuntary struggle, and then a return to the infinity from which he had just emerged.

He thought of the crew, the ten thousand crew, still in the sleep, still under his care. Faith would not release them, or repair a broken ship.

He felt his heart pounding, and felt a surge of warmth spreading out through his body. One of his hands struck soft rubber, the seal between the cryocell and the lid, and he dug his fingers in hard. He felt something tear, something give. The seal broke.

He pushed upwards, out of the cell. The lid swung open and cool stale air hit him in the face. He gasped for air, pulling in breaths as icy liquid ran off of his back.

Around him, row upon row of sleeping crew awaited him.

No transmission.

Journey to Centauri : Episode 4

"Captain. Captain, it is Pravin Lal. Please confirm this signal is reaching you. Over."

Silence.

"I read you, Mr. Lal. I'm awaiting your presence in the command module. It appears we have our work cut out for us."

Pravin smiled at the voice of his captain, sounding clearly from the comm unit woven into the fabric of his collar. He turned his head to respond. "Yes, John. I am outside of Bay Five, and I will reach you shortly."

He quickened his step, anticipating the cramped warmth of the command center after traversing the dark silent ship, and also the more important business of assisting the Captain in finding out what went wrong during their journey. A small asteroid, he guessed, or some kind of space debris...he remembered the odds tallied by the flight computer as being 470 to 1 against such an occurrence, but perhaps their luck had not held.

Or perhaps it was karma, following the humans from their tainted homeworld into the reaches of space.

Pravin stopped before another hatchway and pressed the unlocking studs. As the seal released he glanced around quietly; the ship felt hollow and vast around him, a groaning structure of metal stolen from Earth's crust and propelled into the heavens. When the hatch opened he climbed into a small elevator and pulled the activation lever, listening as the elevator began to whir beneath him, carrying him to the command module at the ship's periphery. He felt the gravity increase as the elevator moved toward the outer carousel of the ship.

The smooth shapes of the cryobays receded beneath him and he examined their surfaces dispassionately. Lonely again. He hoped his mood would improve as the effects of the 40-year sleep wore off. A session in one of the ship's gyropods would help to burn the poisons away, but he had no time for that now.

The elevator stopped and he opened the exit hatchway, then finally reached the red command module hatch. Unusual...the Captain had left it closed, requiring Pravin to punch in a security clearance that he had committed to memory before the journey. The red hatch swung open.

"Officer Lal."

Captain Garland stood on the other side of the command module, surrounded by computer screens and touchpanels that remained mostly dead, as cold as the space outside. The Captain looked tired, gaunt, his uniform hanging loosely on him, but he held himself straight as Pravin entered. A red Procedural Checklist rested at an angle on the metal table near the center of the command module.

"Captain. Good to see you again, sir."

"It feels like only yesterday, Pravin." The Captain crossed to him and they shook hands. "You and I believed in this mission more than anyone. Now I'm counting on you to help me salvage it."

Before Pravin could answer another of the three red security hatches hissed open. A slender form in the green uniform of a ship's scientist pushed her way into the command module and shook the dark hair from her face.

"Deirdre Skye, reporting for duty," she said, and straightened to face her captain.

Episode 4, Part 2

Captain Garland watched as Pravin Lal opened a panel and touched a series of activation studs. Around the perimeter of the command module dark screens flickered on and the slanted touchpanels hummed to life. The air began to crackle with a subtle energy as currents dormant for the last 40 years sprang to life, synthesized minds awakening.

Pravin sat up and flexed his fingers, waiting for the touchpanel in front of him to cycle through its extended wakeup period. As long as there were no medical emergencies on the ship he would man this console, coaxing information from the ship's databases as he might coax a diagnosis from a reluctant patient.

Garland looked around the command module as the screens warmed up. The module was donut shaped, about 10 meters across and ringed by a bank of large screens set in the wall over slanted consoles. The surface of the consoles consisted of flat smooth touchpanels, which accepted input as well as displaying information, reconfiguring themselves based on the user's command sequence. These panels were tied into extensive databanks, optical storage systems sealed in insulated containers in the very center of the ship.

Pravin began to work, his fingers dancing over the panel in from of him, his dark eyes narrowing as he became immersed in his relationship to the machine. Garland looked around again.

"Mister Lal," he said, and Pravin looked up. Garland motioned towards a panel on the other side of the module. As black and cold as space.

"Here too, Captain," came Deirdre's lilting voice with its soft Scottish overtones. Another panel out. Her voice remained calm but Garland could read the tension in her back. Lal crossed to the first broken panel.

"Nothing evident on a cursory glance, Captain. We have taken damage, and the duration of the journey may have taken its toll."

"Very well," Garland answered. "In the meantime let's fire up these consoles and find out what we're up against. Pravin, you know what we're looking for...damage reports, as quickly as possible, and how much we've jeopardized the mission. Deirdre, man the science console and ascertain the status of the crew...how many alive, how many awake, how many dead."

Lal nodded and took his seat, began to punch up the relevant data. A glittering array appeared on the screen before him and he thumbed through it to the damage reports.

"Captain, first reports indicate heavy damage to Hydroponics Mods two and three, as well as heavy structural damage in nearby bulkheads, penetrating through to the drive shield. It is a wonder the drive shut down without tearing the ship apart."

"Mods two and three, leaving only one functional. That plus the nutrient pastes in ship's stowage could support how much of the crew...a third? A half?"

"If revived from the freeze I would say so. It depends on how much of our journey remains."

"And how much of the crew remains, " said Deirdre. "I have no signals at all from cryobay seven."

"Past the shattered bulkhead," murmured Lal. "Dead, probably. All of them."

Just then the hatchway hissed open again, and the Captain looked up to see a shadow cross his threshold.

List of Fatalities
(Cryocell No Response)

Takala T
Vence H
Miller A
Stobie T
Luelmo F
Morin S
Lindahl P
Pettersson D
Landon K
Mannetje C
Coble R

[continued Medical Log
57562A-7B7]

Journey to Centauri : Episode 5

One of the hatches opened into the command bay with a hiss. Garland looked up to see a form gaunt and angular, bent with age, seeming to fade back into the shadows of the circular accessway.

"Captain."

Garland narrowed his eyes, then straightened as the figure entered. Lal stopped his rapid movements over his console to look up. Deirdre kept her eyes fixed on the readouts in front of her.

"Doctor Saratov," said Garland. The older man kept walking, finally coming to a stop near the oval table in the center of the room, where he rested one hand. Garland looked down and took in the wrinkled skin and the slight tremor that belied the relative youthfulness of the Russian's face. The sleep had taken its toll on all of them, but Saratov, whose 66th birthday came two days after the launch, would certainly be dead by now if it weren't for the stasis of the cryogenic sleep.

Then the Russian looked up, and the captain was caught by the intensity in the blue eyes, and that insatiable thirst for knowledge; the iron will formed in the latter day Russian Republic. The United Nations Mission Council had insisted he was the best, and Garland couldn't divine the political motives that swirled behind every decision. Still, they needed him now.

"Good of you to join us, Prokhor."

"Yes, Captain. I came as quickly as possible." Some of the fire had faded, replaced by the haunted look of a man shadowed by his own mortality. Garland flashed back to the personnel records, and he remembered Saratov's tireless research into genetics and aging. "Selfless," the U.N. Review had called it, but Garland wondered.

"What is the ship's status?" Saratov asked.

"Not good."

"But not yet critical," chimed in Deirdre, though she had yet to meet her superior officer's eyes.

"Officer Skye, tell Doctor Saratov what we've got so far."

A wireframe of the ship appeared on one of the screens and rotated in time to Deirdre's briefing. "The ship has been struck by an unknown body approximately 48 astronomical units out from the planet that is our destination. The fusion drive shut down, as it is programmed to do."

"I know what it is programmed to do." The grating Russian accent. Deirdre stopped. Lal rose from his chair and walked over as Garland motioned Deirdre to continue.

"Very well. Because the drive shut down during deceleration, we are moving at appreciable speeds on a trajectory that will carry us right through the Centauri system. We need to do repairs and restore power within four days or we will overshoot the target planet and exit the system."

"Can we turn the ship around?" asked Garland.

"The ship's computer has found a way to use what little fuel we have left to place us in an elliptical orbit, rather like a comet. We can use the Centauri system's gravity well to return us to the planet a number of Earth years hence."

"A number of years hence? How many?" came Saratov's voice, a bridge of ice between them.

"Fifty seven Earth years."

Saratov's hand slammed down onto the command table. "Out of the question!" he shouted. "We will all die in space!"

Deirdre looked at him angrily and shook her head. "Not all of us." She pointed to a monitor screen with a video feed from one of the six intact cryobays, where over a thousand crew slept under glass. "They could last another eighty years or more in hibernation."

Pravin nodded. "If we could not repair the fusion drive in four days, it remains our only option. We four could make the necessary preparations, and the rest of the crew would survive until the next go-round."

"Ridiculous!" said Saratov. "You would have us patch the ship with our eight hands and then wander Skye's gardens until we perish."

He turned to the captain. "Let me wake my engineers, Captain, as many as we can, and restart the fusion drive." He rubbed his hands together. "Four days is enough. They accepted the risks when they took on this mission. They are loyal to me...they will fix the ship in time."

The Captain's hand reached up to brush the U.N. seal on his breast. "You recommend waking up how many?"

"Four hundred, Captain. My best and brightest."

"And if they fail to fix the ship and it takes another fifty seven years to return to the planet, you are comfortable signing their death warrant, and dying with them on this ship?"

"Four days is enough," repeated Saratov stubbornly. "I will take the risk, Captain. I will not let this mission slip from our grasp and retire to my quarters a beaten dog."

"We must decide, Captain," said Lal quietly. "We are very close to our destination, and time is of the essence."

Garland nodded, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and glanced at Saratov. He saw a deep hunger in the Russian's eyes, a hunger that disturbed him, and yet, in this instance, might be enough to save the mission.

"Awaken them," Garland said, and Saratov nodded. Deirdre turned away.

Log Entry Received
Prokhor Saratov, Chief Science Officer

I awaken to find my Captain, his loyal friend Pravin Lal, and my subordinate Skye turning over the data on our broken ship. I intend to bring my staff from cryosleep and repair the ship by any means necessary.

I will not die in space, so close to the new world.

Journey to Centauri : Episode 6

Captain John Garland whirled and tensed inside the human-sized gyroscope that served as the ship's main form of exercise, seeking to burn out the remaining poisons of the long sleep. The last two days had seen a flurry of activity as red-suited technicians emerged from their cryocells and set to work repairing the ship, with Doctor Saratov directing their movements from the command bay like a general directing his troops.

A series of beeps began sounding down the last few seconds of his session, and he responded by a burst of furious effort, pulling and tensing with deep reserves of strength, and he was gratified to see the black and yellow patterns ranged around the perimeter of the gyrosphere blur by at fantastic speeds. The final long tone sounded, indicating the end of the session, and he relaxed his body, letting the sphere spin down to a stop.

"Computer, stop and release," he said aloud, and the sphere gave one last half-turn before clicking into place in an upright position. He let out a whooshing breath...he had needed this brief session to shake off the tension of the command bay. The clamps keeping his arms, feet and waist firmly in position began to loosen by a remote signal when a light flashed above the exit hatch.

"Enter," said Garland, and the hatch opened. A young crewmember in a red jumpsuit stuck her body half into the hatch and saluted. Garland nodded, unable to salute back while his hands and feet remained fixed around the rim of the sphere. He felt suddenly vulnerable...why was he constantly jumpy on his own ship?

"Captain, Officer Saratov asked me to tell you personally that he intends to turn on the fusion drive for a short pulse test. He intends to fire one pulse and measure the stress on the ship's structure."

"Is that wise, Ensign Holloway?" The straps released and he stepped down. The young ensign reflexively took a towel from a small cubbyhole and handed it to him.

"Doctor Saratov feels it is. Officer Skye is concerned about the weakened condition of some of the walls, the Greenhouse in particular," she answered, referring to the last remaining Hydroponics Module.

He nodded, wiping the sweat off of his neck and face. "Then we'd better discuss it further."

Her eyes flickered away from him. "Doctor Saratov was preparing to run the tests as I left the command bay, sir. We may..."

"We'll wait." He pushed through the hatchway and punched the command bay access code on a wall speaker. "Saratov, cancel your tests. We will not push the tests until all hands agree."

"My people assure me it is safe, Captain. We need to move forward in our repairs. We have only...37 hours to reactivate the drive before all hope of stopping the ship in time is lost."

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