Log Entry: 1

14K 345 23
                                    

Cyro didn't feel like six years

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

Cyro didn't feel like six years. I spent six years in an outer space ice box to get to Pandora. It was weirdly warm now that I was awake. The part where I was strapped in moved out of the purple lit box. Breathing felt normal again. A floating med tech maneuvered in front of me.
"Finally." Nyami whispered. The med tech smiled.
"You'll be outta here soon." The med tech unstrapped me and I floated up to the lockers. I opened mine and grabbed something other than this hospital gown to wear. I saw Jake floating to me. I smirked at him.
"People, you have been in cryo for five years, nine months and twenty two days. You will be hungry, you will be weak. If you feel nausea, please use the sacks provided for your convenience. The staff thanks you in advance." The male med tech says in the background.
"You ready for this?" I asked.
"As I'll ever be." He replied. I laughed at him and patted his back.
"This is home now."

We ate, got dressed then they were moving us from an interstellar spacecraft called ISV Venture Star to the Valkyrie. I wasn't complaining. I loved to fly. If not the marines, Air Force. Jake was sitting next to me on the smooth ride. A number of guys had their eyes on me. I took out my fancy butterfly knife and flicked it open. I smirked at one of the men and pointed to his privates. He looked away with the others, scared. Jake's eyes were dull and hard. Like he was just existing.

3rd pov
We were flying over glorious scenery. Flying over a landscape of massive cliffs and towering mesas carpeted in rainforest. Great scarves of cloud swirl around the mesa tops. A primeval landscape, vast and forbidding. The trees are alien, the color too green. There are waterfalls, rivers, and distant flocks of winged creatures. Suddenly, the carpet of virgin rainforest gives way to an open pit-mine. A lifeless crater -- as if a giant cookie cutter took a chunk out of the world. Down among the terraces are excavators and trucks the size of three story buildings. And beyond the mine is the human colony. Where Nyami and Jake will be staying.

The human colony is called Hell's Gate. Hell's Gate is a cluster of squat concrete and steel structures surrounded by a chain-link fence 10 meters high, topped with razor wire. At the corners are towers with automated sentry guns swiveling on servo mounts. Visible beyond the gun towers, the Valkyrie shuttle roars in across the treetops. Vectoring nozzles change angles, bringing the ship to a slow hover.

The crew chief stomps down the aisle yelling.
"Exopacks on!"
Passengers don their EXO-PACK breathing gear with practiced moves. Everybody except JAKE, who's turning this way and that way trying to figure out the straps.
"Remember people, you lose your mask, you're unconscious in 20 seconds and you're dead in four minutes. Let nobody be dead today, it looks bad on my report." The crew chief stops by Jake long enough to bark. "Exopack on, let's go!"

Beneath the shuttle air blasts outward for a hundred meter radius as it settles onto its landing gear. Inside everybody is queued up in the aisles, with duffles ready. Rows of tense, expectant faces in breathing masks rushed out in a single file line. The cargo ramp opens with a hydraulic whine.
"Go directly into the base! Do not stop! Go straight inside!" The chief hollered.
The soldiers were running double time down the ramp. They jog across the exposed apron toward a walkway covered in chain link, which leads to the complex. Nyami rose from her seat after the soldiers went out. She grabbed Jake's carbon-fiber wheelchair and set it out for him. She found Jake, in his wheelchair, putting him at the level of everyone else's waists as she grabbed our bag and threw his at him.
"Gently, I'm fragile." He fake whined.
"Bullshit." Nyami scoffed and walked behind him.

Jake rolls down the ramp, staring upward at the levels of the city. Maglev trains whoosh overhead on elevated tracks. Most of the people wear filter masks to protect them from the toxic air. Jake, pumping his chair, looks around as a huge tractor, taller than a house, roars past on muddy wheels. Jake and I noticed something sticking in the tires, arrows. The neolithic weapons are jarring amid all the advanced technology.

Beyond the tractor, two VTOL vehicles take off. Armored and heavily armed, they are AT-99 "SCORPION" gunships. Mitsubishi MK-6 ampsuits, human operated walking machines 4 meters tall, patrol the perimeter. They are heavily armored, and armed with a huge rotary cannon called a GAU-90. Beyond the outer fence stands a black wall of forest hundreds of feet high. A sentry gun opens fire from a tower. Tracers light up the twilight. A shadowy shape shrieks and drops off the fence.

Two guys who were standing off to the side, were giving Jake and his chair the hairy eyeball as he approached.
"What're you two limpdicks starin' at?" Nyami snapped.
As Jake rolls past, something swoops down behind him and smashes against the chain link right next to his head. A vicious aerial predator a meter across gnashes glass fangs against the steel. It stabs at him through the chain link with a tail ending in a glistening stiletto.
"A stingbat." Nyami muttered. One guy casually blasts it with his pistol. It drops off the fence, tail still lashing. That same guy opened his mouth to speak.
"Seen a lotta guys leave this place in a wheelchair. Never seen anybody show up in one."
Jake simply stares at the gnashing fangs of the dying alien.
"What the hell did we sign up for?" He asked Nyami. She shrugged.
"No clue."

"You are not in Kansas any more." A board man in an army uniform announced. A hundred new arrivals watch raptly as he paces like a panther across the front of the large cafeteria. He stops, stance wide. Without his mask, we see that Quaritch's features are rugged including the scar, which runs from scalp to jaw down one side of his face. On one hip he carries a very large pistol. "You are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day." Colonel Quaritch, head of security for the Hell's Gate colony finished.

Jake and I roll in, watching from the back. Colonel Quaritch raises his hand and points out the window, toward the dark treeline.
"Out beyond that fence every living thing that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes." The room gets very quiet. "We have an indigenous population of humanoids here called the Na'vi. They're fond of arrows dipped in a neurotoxin which can stop your heart in one minute. We operate, we live, at a constant threat condition yellow. As head of security, it's my job to keep you alive. I will not succeed...not with all of you. If you wish to survive, you need a strong mental attitude, you need to follow procedure..."
"Nothing like an old-school safety brief to put your mind at ease." Nyami leans to whisper to Jake. Jake smiles at her. They stay and listen to the rest of the briefing. Nyami was whispering small remarks about Quaritch's speech.

About an hour later, the briefing finished. Nyami noticed that Quaritch kept a close eye on Jake, a sadistic eye. They were released to the corridor to find their way around. Nyami was pushing Jake around as he held a map. People were roaming in both directions, looking for rooms, lugging duffels and cases. An eager young doctor was staggering his way under an overpacked duffel, running to catch up to Jake. When he finally did, he gulped seeing Nyami.
"Hey, you're Jake right? Tom's brother? You look just like him." Jake gives the guy a wary look. "Sorry, I'm Norm Spellman, I went through avatar training with him." Norm laughed slightly. Norm offers his hand and Jake shakes it.
"You were Tom's girlfriend right?" Norm asked Nyami.
"Nah, where'd you get that from?"
"Well, he talked about you a lot and he got an Avatar made for you so I assumed..." Norm trailed off. Nyami just shrugged it off.
"He was a brother to me. Nothing more. He was a bit too..." Nyami paused to find the right word. "Gentle." Norm blushed and cleared his throat to continue speaking.
"He was a great guy -- funny. It was a big shock to all of us.
"Yeah." Jake pumps the wheels of his chair, rolling on. Nyami simply walked behind Jake like an escort. In all honesty, Nyami just didn't want to talk to Norm because Norm was walking with him. "And duh! obviously you look like him. I mean, if you weren't genetically identical, you wouldn't be taking over his avatar."
"Jealous much?" Nyami remarked.
"That's why I'm here."
"So, you want to go check it out?" He offered up a tour which we agreed to after he became less creepy.

""So, you want to go check it out?" He offered up a tour which we agreed to after he became less creepy

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Na'vi...A Tsu'tey FFWhere stories live. Discover now