First Contact

by RayneBowDash

Collision Course

… --efrosting procedure complete.

Aaron felt light-headed. He tried to comprehend what was going on, but found that he couldn’t. He tried to open his eyes, only to find them glued shut. He tried to stand up, only to find that he couldn’t move. Confused, he began to ask where he was before he felt something press itself onto his chest

>>Initializing revival procedure.

--ZAP!--

Aaron arched his back, his eyes shooting open as he let out a scream.

>>Revival procedure complete.

He sagged against the wall once more before opening his eyes again. The cryotube door opened with a woosh as it was flooded with new air. Aaron groggily pulled himself out of the tube, placing his hand on the side to steady himself as he wretched into the gravitationless air.

A few minutes later, he had recovered enough to shakily pull himself into a uniform and take a look at the situation. Four more tubes had been emptied, all from radiation.

How long have I been out?

The FE scrambled out of the cabin and into the bridge, flipping on and reading the time on the Life Support display.

9999:59:59

Terrified, he checked Main Control. 9999:59:59. He had been in that tube for probably over ten thousand years. His muscles had shriveled, and he was now so pale he could barely recognize himself in the his reflection from one of the windows.

The Sensors and Scanners display had been softly blinking on and off, meaning it was the reason why he had been awoken in the first place. He floated over to it and strapped himself in, distracting himself from the loss of life back at the crew cabin as well as his own deterioration (which was pretty hard to do, seeing as it was the best he could manage to keep himself from vomiting due to the massive radiation exposure he had undergone over the centuries).

A large warning took up the center of the screen. It showed the long range active radar scanner’s output pane, filled with a large circular blob that was moving slowly toward the ship.
A planet? thought Aaron, turning toward the starboard windows. Outside, just as the radar suggested, a planet floated, seemingly motionless among the stars. It couldn’t have been more than 400 thousand kilometers away. It was difficult to make out details, but it looked blue and appeared to have an atmosphere, a single discernible moon, and looked like it was orbiting a rather young star.

Is that Earth? Aaron thought as he confusedly checked the sensor history, watching as the planet slowly entered the ship’s viewing range, then finally hit the point at which the ship recognized it as a threat. After running a couple more scans, it did appear that the planet had an atmosphere, and an oxygen-nitrogen based one at that. Not only this, but judging from the light diffraction, most of the surface was composed of salt water!

Excitedly, Aaron noted that the planet was not infact earth, and had a completely different geological appearance from his home planet. Then realization kicked in. The ship wouldn’t have only woken him if it had recognized that the planet was hospitable, which it obviously had not yet confirmed somehow. The fact that he was the only one awake could only mean one thing...

After quickly detaching and pushing himself towards the Navigation station, Aaron fastened himself in yet again and hastily checked the screen, where his fears were confirmed: they were on a collision course. He checked the projected path of the ship towards the planet, and saw the single most terrifying arc he had ever seen in his now many thousand-year lifetime. The ship was not even going to be dragged into the planet by its gravitational pull; it was headed straight for it. And what made it worse was the statistic that appeared beside the graph.

>>Estimated Time until Impact: 1:03:19:42

They had one day. Aaron switched to the Main Control station, not bothering to strap himself in this time.

>> Liquid Oxygen Supplies: 388542 liters
>>Hydrogen Fuel Supplies: 735620 liters

Sh*t. Without even running any calculations he knew that it wasn’t enough. But he had to try anyway. Floating back back over to Navigations, he ran the figures. As he had known, there wasn’t enough fuel to slow their current trajectory and escape orbit. The best he could hope for was to slow their descent, but even then he couldn’t do much due to the fact that the more fuel he burned, the more unpredictable their descent would be.

Cursing, he plotted the safest course he could without jeopardizing the stability of their descent. He angled the thrusters to land them on land because he knew that a water landing couldn’t succeed without recovery teams alerted beforehand, especially at the speeds they were traveling at. After figuring the best graph he could, Aaron finally took a look at his work.

They were going to punch into the dirt at a solid 1400 k/h horizontal, 350 k/h vertical. This figure was good; it meant that they were going to crash at less than a 45 degree angle, and provided enough stopping space they could theoretically slow their descent after initial impact to a livable point. Needless to say, however, they were extremely unlikely to survive the crash.

Aaron put his face in his hands before going back again to the Main Control station and plugging the course in. Before he clicked “submit,” however, he noticed something... A small notification at the bottom right of the display.

>>Authenticate thruster reactivation at requested interval? Y/N

Aaron slammed his fist into the desk with what little muscle mass he had left. He had forgotten to authenticate the final step in the process when he had made corrections, thousands of years ago. Clearing the notice, he inputted the new commands and made sure to authenticate each and every one.

Dejectedly, he scooted away from the display and floated back into the crew cabin. He looked at his final remaining crewmate; trapped within a fortress of ice and sleep. Marco Hernandez, read the plaque above his tube. He was around 5’ 7”, and had lost most if not all of his once-tanned pigment. He was a Mission Specialist as well as Payload Commander; meaning he would be in charge of the mission’s sensors and scientific (as well as any non-scientific) equipment, as well as any mission-specific duties they may have.

Aaron contemplated whether or not to wake him, but decided against it. The man would be depressed by the deaths of his crewmembers, adding the fact that they were rapidly descending into the very habitable planet they had been searching for at unsurvivable speeds, especially considering that the safest place for him right then was inside the tube; it seemed like the best option was to simply leave him there. Not to mention, Aaron didn’t want to have to break it to him that he was the cause behind the whole mess. Besides, it was against mission protocol to wake him up anyway.

Aaron stripped into his thermal suit and climbed back inside his cryotube, hoping beyond hope that he just might survive this catastrophe. As the door slid shut and the clasped into place, he asked himself:

Does death hurt if you’re sleeping when it happens?

Author's Note:

Getting to the ponies in a bit, just hold your horses (oh god kill me now).

Comments

[dooblevarn]

This is interesting so far, keep writing, I'll follow it.

[RayneBowDash]

1808318
Will do, and thanks for the comment. I already have the next few chapters written in essence, I'm just polishing them up for publishing.

[Graviton]

Chapter 1: with awesome sauce.
Chapter 2: Woosh should not be capitalized. Sorry, OCD. Even so, great!