Prospect: Paradigm

Prologue

Three seconds. It's really all she had needed. Bruised and bleeding from her neck, Anna Warren was dismissed by so many as dead. And they left her. They left her behind. But she was a survivor; a trait that had become a part of her identity long before she was chosen to represent humanity in space aboard the illustrious Terra Prospect. How lucky she was to be selected; plucked from a mediocre life; a small-town cop turned instant celebrity. Lucky, she thought. Lucky that the shrapnel didn't instantly end her life as it did to her surrounding colleagues when the medical bay exploded around them. Lucky that she was able to crawl away to the escape pods undetected by rogue androids. Lucky, a survivor. Three seconds before her escape pod was to launch, a hull breach sent the shuttle bay into lockdown and now, she was in freefall, spinning out of control, and suffocating.

Anna fought to find her orientation. Her half-open pod was sputtering about the shuttle bay in stark contrast to the floating obstacles that danced and collided gracefully against it due to the failed artificial gravity. Amidst the battered tech and shipping crates, the bodies of slain engineers and shuttle pilots wafted about like silent ghosts.

Oxygen was fleeing the air.

She ignored the flashing warnings within her pod and pulled the failsafe release, freeing herself from its restraints. Then, pulling her knees up, she kicked off her ravaged escape pod and into the frictionless air. With any luck, her momentum would carry her to the engineering hatch about half-way up the far wall. There's that word again, she thought, luck. Without luck, it'd be far more likely that her bucking escape pod would gore her through the launching station. More still, that she would need to take a breath before reaching the hatch and her last moments would be punctuated with the sensation of saliva boiling on her tongue.

It was one of the fun facts that she had held onto from her training; that liquid boils when exposed to the vacuum of space. From the saliva in her mouth, to the blood in her veins. It terrified her more so than her lungs combusting due to pressure or eventually freezing solid in absolute zero.

She recalled her mother's eyes. The fear-mingled pride shading the lines on her face the moment she told her at a diner over an excessive plate of strawberry-topped waffles.

"It's a two-year program," Anna explained to her, "I'll be able to contact you directly intermittently from gate outposts." Then, adding as if to assure herself, "I'll be back in no time at all."

Her mother's eyes were glass, turning red in the corners as they often did when she was holding back tears.

"Just come back to me," she replied.

It was a request that Anna had every intention of honoring. Her dream to explore the cosmos and distant alien worlds had always included the triumphant journey home. It all seemed so far away now.

Her lungs were burning. She needed to inhale and she appeared to be losing momentum. With her arms outstretched and her hands searching for grip, at last, the hatch was hers.

She unlocked the hatch and slid herself in, quickly pulling the door shut behind her. As soon as it shut, the artificial gravity kicked back in and she collapsed, gasping for air on the cool grates.

A small victory, she thought. At the very least, she was still alive. What puzzled her was trying to piece together what had occurred.

She had been in the medical bay with Dr. Sachs. They were discussing the condition of a colleague who had recently fallen ill. The mission director had taken him back to their home system for treatment. She attempted to make a joke to lighten the doctor's mood. Then, the ship's field androids entered the room and fired rockets into the walls. Flaming shrapnel fell like rain.