In The Dark

One: At Comet's End

The darkness nearly consumed the rear end of the space shuttle that was traveling at a snail's pace above a distant ring of asteroids. The Hunter Gratzner was a long, slim ship with many different parts to it, as any ship would have. But this ship was much more unique. It was a cargo/passenger vessel, and held 40 some passengers headed for New Mecca and other places. There were at least twenty eight in the main passenger deck-the other twelve had to be placed elsewhere. Then there was the cargo hold.

They were both connected very closely-the main passenger hold being directly next to the stock deck-and nearly everything was stored in the cargo hold. There were weapons, for settlers that were moving to New Mecca, water and packed and dried food, clothes and blankets and pillows, the luggage of the sleeping passengers-nearly everything you could think of. And everything had been packed tightly together, so that it was all in one place and not scattered when the passengers woke. But there was one thing being held in its own place of honor, so to speak, directly on the weld mark between the two holds-as a sort of protection. Not for it, but for everything else-and it was in a stasis pod.

It was a man, late twenties maybe. He had the skin of light Caramel-the color covering the entirety of his brawny arms and his partly shielded face. There was a gag between his teeth, and a tattered cloth over his eyes as a makeshift blindfold. On the front of his stasis pod, running across from the bottom left to the top right, read 'Lockdown: Maximum Security.'[1] The stasis pods that kept the individuals standing upright held a kind of chemical to keep the people under-they were in cryo-sleep. When they left the dock at the boarding station in the space port, they were given a sedative to make them go under for the trip past distant planets and galaxies-it was a seemingly endless journey to the port at New Mecca and Vyrox [2]. But the sedative was useless for the Lockdown passenger. There had been rumors that when given the sedative to start the Cryo process, only your primitive side remained conscious when the process was complete. He was fully awake.

The ship was travelling in complete silence-every living being on the craft deep in their sea of dreams; the only noise being the breathing of the man in the Lockdown pod as he peered through a tiny rip in the black material that shielded his eyes-seeing everything in that area of the ship.

He could practically smell the passengers around him. Leather clothing and the still familiar scent of grease and oil from machines that were welded and built-the earthy, pine-like smell-possibly from old pieces of wooden things that were collected or sold. And then a sweet smell permeated the confined cell and filled his nose. He nearly groaned in approval-or was it arousal? - at the sickly nectar-like odor that graced him in his tightly packed pod. He could almost swear it was a mixture of strawberries and a little sweat-slickened sugar. Normally, it would make him bare his teeth in annoyance from its intensity-but the way it drifted in with him in his cell, and the certain aroma it gave off almost made his eyes shut tight in concentration--wanting to preserve the air around him as long as he could.

He stayed like that for the longest time before a monstrous lurch shook him from the serenity of the smell around him. He growled in irritation, baring his teeth as best he could past the gag. Oh, if only his teeth could rip through the restrictive piece of shit.......

His anger was replaced by a short-lived wave of panic as the craft began to fall from its orbit. He cocked his head to the side in wonder. He hadn't felt that emotion since he was just a cub on his home planet. But as soon as it came, it went. And even as contact between the ship and the unknown planet's atmosphere created turbulence, he remained still-not one trace of fear nor panic nor hysteria in his blood.

After the short few minutes it took for the craft to fall, he could feel the weight of the ship becoming lighter. There were sections of the machine coming apart. He smirked. Maybe after the hunk of metal landed, he'd be able to free himself from the makeshift prison he'd been placed in.