I vacated the clean, brightly lit, lavender-scented bathroom and stepped into a bitterly cold, noisome chaos of alarms and flashing lights. My ally stood at the door, still in her blood-splattered suit, all I could see of her through her helmet were her eyes which were wide in shock. I went over to the engineering console and tapped through several screens of warnings until the alarms and most of the flashing red lights went off.

  Behind me came the hiss of the module airlock closing and the sound of a suit helmet being released. I turned as my ally removed her helmet, freeing an unlikely amount of red frizzy hair. A pretty, pale-skinned freckled young woman looked at me, gave half a sob, and then with a visible effort brought herself under control.

  “I have been using a freezing bucket used by three men with really bad aim and a woman who thought hygiene was a greeting… and … And… you just wander in here and find a toilet I didn’t even know existed. And the lights are on,” she said, looking around her as if looking at the module for the first time and shuddering. “By the Great Know-All, this place is a shithole, no wonder they didn’t put the lights on.” I looked around, taking in my non-mission-critical surroundings for the first time. The module looked extremely lived-in and it was obvious cleaning hadn’t been the crew’s priority.

  “I’ve seen worse, It’ll clean up,” I replied shrugging, and held out my hand for her to shake, “Brantel Hawk, at your service. She stared at me, then cautiously shook my hand.

  “Lieutenant Zia Surex of the Jeckon Secret Service at yours. I was expecting someone older… A lot older,” she said carefully, still examining my face.

  “Yes, it's a bit of a mystery, that. I went into the cold sleep pod as an old man and came out like… this.”

  “Are you really the Brandell Hawk, As in the Commander of the Free Fleets, the destroyer of the White Rock Corporation”

  “Ummm… well I had help with the White Rock Corporation, but yes, that's me,” I admitted.

  “Cool, I learnt about you in school. I have been ordered to escort you to our high temple in Kacke where the great Know-All has requested your presence… If that is alright with you… Sir.”

  I looked at the young woman who was gazing at me with awe.

  “How long have I been frozen for?” I asked, getting a sudden sinking feeling.

  “Oh… You don’t know? You were frozen about ninety-nine years ago… Sir,”

  “Oh. Fuck.” I replied, a sudden roaring in my ears

  “Are you okay, Sir?”

  “I… think I need to sit down,” I said as my mind whirled. Everyone I knew was dead, except perhaps for my most annoyingly persistent enemies who would, no doubt, already know I’d escaped and would be turning Jeckon inside-out to make sure my unexpected reappearance was brief and full of pain. Not only that, everything I knew was a century out of date. I had no plan, no way out… I put my hand on the back of the captain’s chair to steady myself. It was sticky. Zia put a hand on my arm.

  “Umm…Maybe not there, here, come and sit on my bunk,” she led me to the back of the module and an area, half hidden by a ragged blanket next to a stack of mismatched batteries and a cat's cradle of wires that hummed ominously. I let her sit me down on what was either a narrow bunk or an oversized storage locker, then she left me alone with my existential crisis. A few moments later I heard her return.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out like that. I thought you would already know.” Zia said softly, putting a hand on my shoulder and interrupting my brooding. I looked at her. She had taken off her spacesuit and was wearing what looked like a white, skin-tight undersuit and I suddenly became very aware that I was next to an attractive young woman who was dressed in nothing but her underwear. On her bed.

  I realised this had the hallmarks of a potentially compromising situation and stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry Lieutenant. I will allow you to get dressed. Forgive me for intruding on your privacy.” Zia looked down at herself in panic then looked confused.

  “Uh, what? I am dressed,” she said, then giggled. “Oh, Commander, fashion has changed a bit in the last hundred years. What I am wearing is a shipsuit, it keeps me warm, it keeps me safe and it stops me from smelling too bad. Although after three days aboard this shithole, I would kill for a shower and maim for access to a fabric cleanser.”

  I went over and pressed the button by the bathroom door, a panel slid back to reveal a small industrial fabric cleanser behind protective film.

  “No maiming required, and as part of your share of the spoils of war, you can also use the shower in with the toilet. There should be a food prep area somewhere too… And for your information, we did have shipsuits in my day, they just weren’t quite so…” I waved my hand at Zia, “tight.”

  “This is the fashion now, Do you have a problem with that?” Zia asked, smiling, I forced myself to look at her face, her very pretty face. She had green eyes that sparkled with mischief.

  “Maybe it’s okay for you young things, but us umm… veterans have to conceal a bit of expansion in the midriff area. Also, you mentioned you were a secret service agent. How are you even going to conceal any weapons while wearing that?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation onto more appropriate subjects. Zia stifled a giggle and I realised I’d failed miserably as she tapped me lightly on my shoulder.

  “Oh you. You should know a lady never reveals where she hides her weapons,” then she poked me in my stomach, “and you don’t have any expansion of your midriff, you would rock a shipsuit. Not that what you are wearing ain’t cool, just… old fashioned.”

  “Lieutenant, your behaviour could be construed as behaving inappropriately towards a senior officer,” I said, trying to regain control of the conversation and Zia laughed bitterly.

  “Between us, we have just murdered four citizens, pirated their airship and you are worried about what’s appropriate. And you’re not my senior officer, the Jekon Theocracy didn’t even exist when you were frozen. Do any of the governments who gave you your commissions even exist anymore?” Zia asked. I shrugged.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Unless the Anglia Empire has re-established itself, or the Centauri Republic has risen again, probably not. And just because I’m a murderous old revolutionary doesn’t mean I don’t have standards. I was old enough to be your great-grandfather before I was frozen,” I pointed out. Zia sighed.

  “Okay, I get it, you think you’re too old to flirt with me. Fine. But if you’re going to have a breakdown you need to wait until we reach civilisation. I need you functioning to fly us out of here.” As if to make the point a gust of wind hit the airship and we both staggered.

  “You mean you don’t know how to fly this thing?” I asked. Zia’s face fell.

  “No, only the Captain knew. I hadn’t actually planned for his death. I hadn't really planned for any of them to die.” Zia said with a shudder.

  “They did rather force the issue,” I pointed out and went over to the Captain’s console to examine the small, battered control screen that was clipped to it. “Is this what he used to fly this thing?” I asked, looking at the combination of basic direction controls, the complicated buoyancy management systems and something that either controlled a weapons system or was a tower defence game.

  “Yes, the power for the engines comes from solar panels charging the batteries by my bunk,” Zia said, peering over my shoulder. I tapped a few buttons on the disturbingly sticky main console, transferred the controls over to the module and turned on the main screen. The lieutenant gasped and stepped back as it flashed into life. I took in all the status screens.

  “Zia?” I asked, looking at one of the many flashing warnings on the screen.

  “Yes, what’s up?”

  “Can you put your suit back on and disconnect every battery you can find? Quickly.” I said as calmly as I could.

  “Won’t we lose power?” she asked, pulling on her suit with reassuring alacrity.

  “Lack of power is not a problem. My suit is flooding the whole module with power and it looks like that bank of batteries was not built with this scenario in mind. They don’t have any safeguards to stop them from overcharging and overheating.”

  “I don’t think overcharging has ever been a problem before,” Zia called from the back of the module. There was a fizzing electrical sound, half the warning lights disappeared from the screen and the persistent background hum disappeared.

  “That fixed it,” I called.

  “These batteries are super hot, should I put them in one of the cargo holds to cool off?”

  “Good idea,” I said, absently as I reviewed the power set-up. Behind me, one of the module doors opened and a cold draught blew through the already chilly module bringing with it the smell of overheated plastics. I went into the environmental controls to turn on the heating and ventilation and noticed a warning left by the team who’d prepped the module for storage many, many years ago.

  I pulled out the survival knife I’d nicked from the space station store and ran it across the bottom edge of the Captain’s chair. After a couple of passes, it cut through the coating that had been sprayed over the whole module to protect it from harm and peeled the encrusted, yellowing film off, managing to do the whole chair in one go, leaving it looking like new. I then carefully repeated the same process with the Captain’s console and was just starting on the main screen when Zia appeared, sans suit, towelling her hair and smelling of shampoo.

  “Watcha doin’?” she asked, exaggeratedly fluttering her eyelashes at me.

  “Do you know why this whole module is sticky?”

  “It’s nothing to do with me. It was like that when I joined.”

  “When this module was stored it was sprayed with a coating to protect it which was never removed, we just need to peel it all off and we’ll have a clean module. The stickiness is just the coating degrading.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief. Ooo, can I have a go?” she asked and I ripped the film off the main screen in one satisfying movement, instantly making the screen brighter and clearer.

  “Go for it. Chuck the old film out the lift, it’s no good for anything now. I’m going to try and fly this thing.” I handed Zia my knife, sat down in the Captain’s chair and turned on the external cameras so I could see where I was going, double checked none of the dead bodies had got up and wandered off, then brought up a rather rudimentary map and tried to plot a course before I was distracted by the sound of detaching film.

  “I’ve got the whole ceiling, ‘scuse me,” Zia walked delicately across the console in front of me, flashing her shapely ankles as she detached a huge wodge of film from the ceiling. As the film came away from the ceiling, exposing the lights and air vents, the module got noticeably brighter and a warm breeze started to circulate. I waited until she’d finished stripping the front of the module then sent power to the motors that powered the four propellers, the module shook and leant to one side as I turned the airship around and headed away from the scene of the crime and towards the glacier’s toe.

  “I have a question. Why are you calling this a module?” Zia asked after a few minutes of film peeling while I tried to work out how to get the airship to descend.

  “Because that’s what it is. This is the bridge module of a heavy battleship containing all the really complicated, expensive stuff, and, in the event that the battleship itself is compromised, it’s designed to act as a lifeboat for the bridge crew.”

  “Ahh, that’s one mystery solved. I was told to bring this back in one piece if I could. Is this valuable then? I mean, more valuable than a normal airship.”

  You’re asking someone who’s been frozen for a century,” I shrugged, “but if there hasn’t been a technological revolution, any of the Corporations would consider a few million and the bad publicity well worth it to get their hands on one of these.” Zia looked around at the module with fresh eyes.

  “At college, one of my tutors said we’re in an age of technological stagnation and have been for a couple of centuries. But you're saying this is worth a few million credits? Wow. But why the bad publicity? Who cares if the Corps have one more battleship? Well, not even a battleship, just part of one.”

  “Not credits. Lives. Money won’t buy one of these, but more than a few Corps would be quite happy to slaughter their way across a planet to get their hands on one of these. Unless there have been some major policy changes in the last century. Making an AI Mind as powerful as the one in here has been forbidden since before I was born.”

  “If the AI in this is so powerful, why are you struggling with the controls?” Zia asked.

  “Because I haven’t allowed it access to the module systems. I don’t want to deal with a borderline sentient AI that has been dormant for fuck knows how long to find out it considers humans a parasitical infestation. It might not even be of human origin.”

  “Oh,” Zia said. There was a long pause, and then the sound of film being removed. I used this time of blissful silence to figure out how to control the elevation of the airship which I felt was far more complicated than it needed to be. Eventually, after a lot more film removal, Zia returned to stand between me and the screens.

  “So let me get this straight. I am stuck on board a stolen airship, on an uncharted glacier, at least two days' flight from any form of civilisation, on a planet famous for its violent and unpredictable weather. My only companion has just murdered three of my former crewmates, is one of the most notorious terrorists ever to have lived, and doesn’t appreciate my fashion sense. Our living quarters are made from a piece of technology the Corps would commit genocide for because it contains an AI that might think humans are an itch that needs scratching?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied. “Although I prefer the term freedom fighter or revolutionary, to terrorist.”

  “I should have listened to my mother and become a Priestess,” Zia sighed.

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