Starpiercer: Sunlight's Edge

CHAPTER X: TOMAS V

X
Tomas V

He woke up to the now-normal sensation of a focused tingling feeling slowly creeping across his neck, and blinked hard. The sleeping alcove was still dark, and he was thankful for it. He'd seen the rooms where the ratings slept, only a little bigger than the alcove, with one wall serving as their cot. He got better accommodations.

He reached up, arms still encased in the thick green arm covers that extended from the hibernation pouch, and pushed open the door to his habitation module. They drifted open as he unbuttoned the hibernation pouch and kicked out of his alcove, rubbing his neck, his movements still a little quick with the induction of the wakefulness drugs.

He spun as he floated to the other side of his habmod's tiny seven-by-seven square, reached up to peel the drug patch off of his shoulder and dutifully placed it in its drawer. Not my favorite way to sleep, but it serves. Tomas lurched a little towards the far wall, and glanced up at the burn reader. 0.085 Gs. They were cruising along at a cool pace, simmering down from the night-long burn. He rubbed some life back into his legs. The only problem is the damn drugs. There were drugs for everything on long-haul flights. Even sleeping and waking up. Sleeping while being crushed at two or three Gs of acceleration while the ship thundered through the void was nearly impossible, so they wore their drug patches, and a heady concoction knocked the voidsmen out in minutes. He unplugged the long tube from his abdominal belly port, and let it float back into his alcove. If he needed to wake up quickly -if the ship-wide alarms were set off- it would have pumped him into full, manic wakefulness in seconds. He was glad he'd never needed it.

Instead, the mild wake-up call of the much more gentle eugregorics had been enough to slowly ease him out of the sedated stupor that passed for sleep on a voidship.

He yawned as the G count on the room's secondary monitor crept closer to absolute zero and slapped the only wall panel in his room that wasn't the door access. A stall about the size of his hibernation alcove, its only difference from the one he slept in it's bare tiled walls, ceiling and floors and the grates embedded in them. And the toilet, a nondescript metal bowl with a hole and a cover.

"Steam," he announced loudly, and picked up a dry sponge from a rack on the far wall.

Over the next few minutes, to the hissing noise of the steamer, he was soaked head to toe, sponged himself down with soapy water, and then shut off the steamer. Within moments, the warm, humid air was gone, replaced by the regular chilly dryness. The door cycled open when the moisture level dropped low enough, and he squirmed into his G-suit, eyes on the monitor. Outside, there was the void. In the foreground, there was his day's schedule.

Breakfast, today's assignment. No bridge duty today, just EVA...

His eyes flicked back up. EVA?

When he'd gotten into his G-suit and strapped on his rig, he slapped the wall panel and kicked out into the corridor.

"Rig?" he asked. "Call the captain." He paused. "If he's awake, of course."

The machine beeped once and began to vibrate. Moments later, Captain Colemon's groggy voice came to life in his ear.

"Mornin' doc, what is it?"

He grabbed a handhold and turned down another corner. "You sound awfully cheerful, captain."

"Indeed I am," intoned Colemon. Tomas could positively hear the grin through the soundwaves. "We're gonna pass within five hundred klicks of the LUMAR in three days. Tylo in eight." He sighed contentedly. "Two days after that, we're out of here and back to the Corporate Alliance. That means space stations. Real food, drugs that are actually fun, real alcohol, real rollies, and real sex." He paused for a moment, and Tomas heard a sniffing noise. "Real showers too."