The Lonely Whelk by Ariele Sieling Page A

years already?”
    She smiled. “That it has, Corporal. This
woman is Hazel, and she is going to help you wake up the crew. That
shipbot will be translating. I will explain everything later.”
    “ Aye, aye!” He gave a very
floppy salute.
    Holland smiled and turned to Hazel. “Please
hurry,” she said.
    Hazel nodded, wide-eyed, and Holland turned
and left the room.
    The walk back to the bridge was just as
painful as the walk to the coffin room had been, but the pain was
changing. The pins and needles had largely worked themselves out at
this point, and now it was mostly the loud, agonizing pain of
muscle disuse. She knew that there were a series of stretches that
were supposed to help this condition, but she didn’t know what they
were and the head nurse on board was still asleep. Besides, she had
far more important things to worry about than sore muscles.
    She sank into the chair in front of the
bridge console, sighing with relief. It would be nice to have some
time to sit. She pulled up the ship’s logs. Five, including one of
Hawkings explaining his death, were red-flagged as important; one
was green-flagged as personal. She swallowed, and then selected the
oldest of the red-flagged video logs.
    “ Good morning, sis!”
Hawkings’ cheerful face appeared in the monitor. “I probably look
awfully cheerful for a red-flagged video. It’s because... well,
it’s because this morning was horrible, but we still made it
through. We’re all still alive. Can you believe it’s we made it
nearly the full 600 years without a red-flagged video? I have to
say, I’m getting excellent at Jingle Cards, although Lady Mastin
can still beat me most of the time.
    “ Anyway, this morning we
went through what we thought was an asteroid belt. It was not.
Instead, it was a series of alien weapons designed to look like
asteroids – a minefield, of sorts, but for ships. Our shields took
quite a beating, and at one point I had to wake up Thompson to have
him do repairs.”
    Hawkings’ face grew solemn. “Unfortunately,”
he continued, “we were too late. During the attack we lost power in
Corridors three, five, and seven. Now that the power is back, we
have frozen the bodies so they can be properly cared for when the
ship arrives at the planet. We will also hold a funeral service as
soon as we can.
    “ The aliens haven’t come
after us, so we think the field was just a remnant from an old war
that we weren’t a part of – so that is a positive thing, at least.
But it doesn’t make up for the lives of our people that were so
horribly lost. I’m so sorry, Holland.”
    The video ended.
    The next red-flagged video was the funeral
service. Holland didn’t think she could watch that right now. Her
head ached with the pain that came from holding back tears, and the
deep ache of sorrow permeated her every thought and motion. The
other two videos were the deaths of Lord and Lady Mastin. She
didn’t want to watch those either. Due to the disaster with alien
technology, the voyage had not gone particularly smoothly, and the
colony would suffer for it. Now it was her responsibility to make
the rest of the voyage and colonization go according to plan.
    She gazed up through the windows into the
vast darkness of nothing that surrounded them, in which massive
world-eating and world-birthing stars were merely pinpricks in the
distance, and sighed. Then, slowly, she opened the last video. It
was the one marked personal. It was Hawkings.
    He glanced over his shoulder as he leaned
into the camera, and in a hushed voice began.
    “ Holland,” he said, “we
have received word from Sagitta. Johann has died.”
    Holland hit pause and gasped, a deep gasp of
air wrenching through her lungs and throat like a knife. A tear
squeezed from her eye, despite her desperate effort to keep her
emotions from completely incapacitating her. Johann – dead. Of
course, it was bound to happen. How many centuries had gone by
during the time that she was traveling