Surface: Doomed Planet

Excerpt 1: Marooned

"Error in cryogenic containment array", The computer's staticy voice chirped as feeling began to return to my limbs, "primary and secondary Cyro Fluid pumps failed, Pods 1-3 damaged, releasing magnetic locks....done. Pods 4-10 undamaged Error, Systems detect Magnetic locks on Pods 4-10 are unresponsive, inhabitants must be manually released to avoid asphyxiation."

There was a loud hiss as my pod came open. The door opened about half way, when there was a loud POP and then a bright flash as the door slammed shut. Jolting me out of my half asleep state. I rubbed my visor, clearing off the fog, finding that the front of my pod was covered in ice and what looked like dust. As of this moment, I was completely numb, almost too weak to move my arms, legs still felt good, but my tail was numb, there wasn't anyway I was moving that until I could get some blood flowing, witch meant getting out of this pod. So fighting the lack of feeling in my arms, I placed my hands against the glass and pushed, not budging the door at all.

"Come on!", I coughed as I pushed harder, "come on budge!"

The door began to give just a little bit.

"Why does every door in this galaxy have hydraulic pistons locking it!?", I asked myself as I pushed against the door with all of my quarter ton, finally overcoming the locking rods and pushing it open, falling onto my stomach once my support had been removed.

"Fuck", I moaned as I tried to push myself up, not faring to well, "come on, get up."

I slowed my breathing, lowered my heart rate and lay there for a few seconds while the feeling returned to me. When what I'd say had to be two, three minutes had passed I was able to stand up and stretch out. This was about the time the people in the two other pods, my friends Alcatraz and Mike, also returned to the land of the living. Their skin was much paler than it had been when we'd first boarded this ship who knows how long ago, but by judging from the way the windshield was covered in vines and dirt it'd been a while.

"You guys okay?", I asked.

"I can hardly move", Mike answered.

"Me either", Alcatraz said, "even if I could I need a minute to boot my Exo."

"We don't have a minute", I said, "the other pods don't have working locks, we've got to manually release them or Sarah, Matt, Magellan, Tyler, Jacob, Allen and James are gonna suffocate."

"It's always something", Alcatraz said pushing himself up.

I helped up Mike and then the three of us set to work releasing the Cyro pods, a task difficult to do from our overall weakness alone and the fact that they had hydraulic pistons for locks just made it all the harder. I started with Sarah's pod while Mike got Jacob and Alcatraz worked on Tyler's. The pods were the same cyro pods that Magellan and I had on our old ship before a crazy man called Martin Denis ruined it, so I knew my way around them. The manual release was located at the top of the pod and pulling it would drain the fluid from the pistons. I climbed up on the pod, felt around for the release and pulled it. There was another POP as the release opened and the hydraulic fluid spilled into a holding tank so it could be recycled. After that I was able to raise the door without too much difficulty and Sarah about fell into me, awake, but too weak to move. She coughed and choked as she tried to get words out.

"Don't talk", I said lowering the cyro pod door, "give yourself a minute to get the blood flowing again."

I sat Sarah down and gave her some room as I opened Jame's Pod and Mike opened Magellan's. Once he was out, I went to the front of the ship and sat in the pilot's seat, facing my friends, who looked just as tired an worn out as I was. We sat quietly for a few minutes while the feeling returned to our bodies and then Allen spoke up.