Seeder Saga by Adam Moon

“None of the colonists can get this boat safely to the seed planet.”
    Sarah thought to herself, They’d know how if they were taught, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew it was cowardly to not give up her pod, but she was okay with that. She wanted to live.

The Culprit
     
    Michael said to Jack and Sarah, “Listen, we don’t know if there’s any more powder, and I’m nervous about going back into stasis without a guarantee of safety.”
    Jack said, “What makes you think we’ll be giving your pod back to you?”
    Michael smiled, but he had a faraway look in his eyes that was unreadable. “You don’t get to decide whether I live or die out here in the void. Only I can decide that.”
    Jack said, “Alright tough guy, how do you suppose we root out who did this?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Sarah smirked. “Of course you don’t want to catch the perpetrator , because you did this.”
    “I did not. I already explained myself.” Then he went silent for a couple seconds and said, “We could lie. We know whoever took the powder also took the air handler. We could tell the colonists that our air handler went down and we can’t find the replacement unit. Whoever did this isn’t dumb enough to let himself suffocate to death along with everyone else. He’ll come forward with the unit and then we’ll have our saboteur.
    Jack nodded. “That’s not a bad plan. For the record, I still think you did this, but if you didn’t, I’d like to know who did, just to get the rest of the explosives out of their hands.”
    Sarah added, “And if no one comes forward, we’ll know for certain that it was you.”
    Michael started to say, “Not necessarily…”
    B ut Sarah cut him off with, “Wake the rest of the colonists.”

The pod bay was pandemonium , but it was a necessary chaos. Jane brought down the other colonists who’d had their pods tampered with so all were now present.
    The complaints were many , but they immediately quieted down when Sarah yelled, “Our air handler has malfunctioned. We have a spare around here somewhere, but we can’t find it. If we don’t find the spare we’ll all die up here.”
    A smarmy male voice said, “We don’t need air while we’re in stasis.”
    “No, but if a pod needs to be repaired, no one will be able to be revived to fix it. We’ve already had over two dozen pods malfunction and we’re only a couple hundred years into the mission. At that rate, every one of these pods will go down at some point, and no one will be able to fix them. As I said, we’ll all die.”
    The man nodded , but to save face he added, “Well, I didn’t know about that.”
    The crowd bustled as a diminutive man made his way to the front. He smiled and said, “I’ve found it.” In his hands was the replacement air handler.
    Sarah said with exaggerated enthusiasm, “Oh great. Thank God for you, sir.”
    Jack and Jane were already helping the colonists back into stasis as Sarah led the small man up to her command station. He had to be separated from the group.
    Michael was waiting inside, wrists still tied together. Sarah walked right up to him and cut his restraints with her pocket knife.
    “Sorry I blamed you.”
    “If the roles were reversed, I would have blamed me too.”
    Then Michael looked at the man with the air handler. He went up to him and took it out of his hands. The last thing they wanted was for him to figure out that he’d been set up and use their only spare air handler as some sort of leverage.
    Michael said, “I remember this guy. I had to fix his pod pretty early on in the mission.”
    Sarah nodded, knowing full well that Michael had probably been responsible for damaging the pod in the first place just so he’d be woken from stasis.
    “He was awake when I took your gun. He must have seen me empty the shells and hide the powder.”
    By the time the little guy figured out he’d been caught, Michael already had his wrists bound behind his back.
    The man said, “You