The War Of a Thousand Dead Planets

Chapter 11: Flashback

This chapter doesn't connect dirrectly to the story line like the rest do, but it explains why Xelce & two Quibzy birds survived in the stasis pods.

Flashback
        Xelce pulled open the cage with the Quibzies & reached inside, separating the two male birds who were fighting over a female. She tucked one of the males under her arm & the female under the other arm, eliminating the problem. She flicked the cage shut with her tail & strode off. Taking the ladder from the outer ring to the second ring in a single jump, she hopped off down the hall toward one of the stasis pod rooms.

        The door slid open automatically, revealing 9 stasis pods functioning properly, & one emanating sparks from the life-support system. She drew a screwdriver from her belt with her tail, poking lazily at the stasis pod a couple times. The sparking stopped.

        Stasis pods were onboard each diskship, twenty of them to a ship, for the crew. Half the crew would sleep at a time, to save energy. Every 420 quybes, they would trade who was asleep & who was awake. 420 quybes was how long one Geshian day was, one Geshian 24 hours, but due to Gesh's size, 420 quybes was roughly 3 Earth days, 1 Earth hour,  46 Earth minutes, & 48 Earth seconds. After a stasis pod was closed for that long, it would open automatically, or the pilot could press the all-hands-on-deck alarm, & the stasis pods would open.

        Everyone had an assigned position for when that alarm went off. Xelce's place was to get down & cover her head. Needless to say, she didn't like it very much. Life-support-support just wasn't the coolest job.

      Bee-wee-oh! Bee-wee-oh! The all-hands-on-deck alarm blared to life, roaring noisily. The stasis pods opened, & the crew inside jumped out & bounded off down the hall without a word to the life-support-IT. Xelce ducked down between two stasis pods & covered her head with her tail, pulling the two Quibzies closer to her. She could feel the ship swerving beneath her & wished she was at a window so she could see her sister's spectacular evasive maneuvers for once. The ship gave a lurch & she knew it had been hit. The birds gave frightened screeches & she hushed them.

        Suddenly, the ship gave an almighty rumble & the life support failure alarms went off. Waaa-aaaaahh!!! Waaa-aaaaahh!!! Not the kind telling her to fix it, but the kind saying she had mabey 0.1 quybes to save herself.

        Thinking fast, she flung the Quibzies into a stasis pod & closed it, then jumped into another stasis pod. Stasis pods had separate life support to the rest of the ship, so this would buy her 420 quybes to be rescued from the wreckage of the ship. She closed the stasis pod & everything went black.
End of flashback.