Chronicles of the Desolate

🪐Awake

Hua-Jung

Hua-Jung was only allowed onto the ship after her repair droid had already gone through the entire wreck and reported back.

Skeletons of the dead crew lay scattered all over the ship, a few ores and supplies, and lastly the sealed cryo room.

Sparrow would go check out and clear the storage room, and then check out the cryo room for sny survivors while Hua-Jung would make her way first to the flight deck and recover any information she could from the ship.

She slipped on a mask that covered her whole face, to protect her from noxious spores and to provide night vision. Despite the lava glow outside, it was dark inside the broken ship. 

Her repair droid accompanied her through the dark corridors, climbing over torn metal, rubble, and the occasional skeleton.

Time and humidity had rusted the systems and Hua-Jung was unable to activate any systems. The ship was dead and broken. However to her surprise, there was the necessary machinery indicating a Ship Mind on board. She quickly relaid this information to the Captain before making her way down to the engine room.

All Ship Minds were located in a large walnut capsule in the engine room. If you were to crack open the capsule, you would find a human brain enlarged in almost ten times the average to be able to think and act as fast as a living computer. A Ship Mind was a much better and safer option a smart computer. Also a lot harder to get and just as expensive.

Hua-Jung connected her feed to the Ship Mind and immediately was assulted by a screaming storm. 

It brought her to her knees, hands over her ears, and her nails digging into her skin.

The roaring sound was enough to make her ears bleed, but she was smart enough to apply counter-measures should something like this happen. Her Artificial Inteligence was able to sever the connection just two seconds after Hua-Jung had made the connection. 

No one else knew this had happened. 

Hua-Jung was left crouched and panting on the floor. Unprompted, her eye computer had started analysing the two-second recorded scream and was able to write out all that the Ship Mind had been screaming. 

A girl. 

His.

Alone

In cryo sleep. 

So, so alone.

So many voices from a single Mind.

Crashed for what felt like centuries but was only calculated to roughly five years.

Hua-Jung straightened, hands still pressed to her ears. When she removed them, they were spotted with tiny droplets of blood. She relayed the new found information to the Captain and Sparrow while her repair droid began preparations to move the Ship Mind, cutting off all the Ship Mind's connection to the rest of the ship. 

Falconi barked the order to hurry it up. He didn't say it, but Hua-Jung knew that he wouldn't like staying on this planet for long, and no one certainly didn't want to hang around a crash site. It was common superstition that a crash site carried heavy bad luck.

She left out the part where the Ship Mind was insane. That explantion could wait until they were safely away from 

Vishal

Her face was tilted it up, giving the appearance of a more square like jaw with hollowed cheeks. Before Vishal stood the recovered cryo pod, crudely extracted from the downed ship. Vishal was grateful for the glass design of the pods as it allowed him to fully examine her body and get a full extent of her injuried and prepare before he would attempt to open the pod. 

There were the obvious signs of the crash; burns, cuts, and bruises that looked about a couple days old. Those would need attention, but were not important or life threatening. 

He noticed her arms crossed over her chest like a buried pharaoh he'd read in ancient books about their ancient history. 

What concerned Vishal the most were two things: The girl being frozen for five years, and the state of her legs. From the knees down, her legs were obviously suffering from frostbite, growing up from her toes and steadily spreading upwards. They would have to be amputated. He could possibly salvage half of the shin, but it would easier to cut at a joint. 

Her body was lacking in melatonin, and she was severly pale. 

The damage was like a work of art, bruises a dark colour, blossoming in blues and purples across the marble white skin, veins visible in criss-crossing patterns around her wrists and ankles.

She looked dead, and could very well have been. Expired in the cold.

But the computer stated otherwise. However slim, chances were she could be revived and would be walking among them soon.

Vishal wasn't deterred by the high possibility of death. 

Vishal called over his assistant, a young orphaned boy of barely 16 years the crew had taken in almost 8 years ago. He had become Vishal's assistant when he was 12, and was a fast learner and undeterred by blood and gore. A happy and easy-going boy. 

"Doctor?" 

"Can you manually open this pod? Our computers are unable to. There seems to be a series of complicated passcodes..."

"Yes sir!"

"But before you do, prep the operation table."

In unison, the two brought drips of nutrients, vitamins, and supplements over to the operation table. Special tools were cleaned and disinfected and placed neatly on a blue tray. Vishal spoke to Trig about the injuries and how he planned on treating them. It always helped him to say out loud what he would do in the operation. 

First thing they had to do was attach the drips and set up an EKG. Trig had needles of sedatives (propofol) and anesthesia for the moment she awoke. They had no idea the affect cryostasis had on her body, and they would run tests as soon as possible. 

He would stitch up all the cuts to prevent the girl from bleeding out while running those tests. Trig would hook her up to a blood IV while he did this.

For the frostbite, Vishal would numb the entire leg, whether she was awake or not. Trig would place a tourniquet around 2 inches about her knees. Vishal would then cut the skin to the bone, disarticulate the knee joint, and then stitch up the skin. First the right leg, then the left. 

There were x-rays and MRI's to be done to check for internal bruising, bleeding, or broken bones.

One of the last things they would do if there were no other serious injuries and all was done, was apply a cream for the bruises.

Finally the room was ready to receive it's patient.

Trig fiddled around with the pad, and it took all over 4 minutes to unlock it, and he stepped back to stand side by side with his mentor and wait for the cryo tube to release it's inhabitant.

This process would usually take between 10 and 20 minutes, as the metal cylinder had to drain first and then inject the sleeper inside with the needed chemicals to wake the body and mind up. 

But she didn't wake up. 

Her body toppled forward after the glass opened, and would have hit the ground if Vishal had not stepped forward to intercept her. They'd both assumed she would have woken up and stepped out herself when the un-cryo-ing process was completed, but evidentally, she did not. 

Vishal and Trig lifted her cold body onto the operation table and quickly set to work, with Trig applied pressure to the now bleeding cuts while Vishal worked as quickly as he could to stitch them up. 

Vishal mentally snapped his fingers while he worked. Of course he should have thought of the chance the frozen victim wouldn't wake up straight away, in fact it makes sense. Or she was dead, but her body was biologically not due to all they'd done. 

It was going to be a long couple hours working on their mystery survivor.