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Malfunction
by Nina Croft

Copyright © 2020 by Nina Croft. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Prologue

Somewhere in space

Year 2544

He came awake suddenly, his eyes flashing open, and he lay in the utter darkness, breathing quietly.

Don’t panic.

There was nothing to worry about. Soon someone would come, and the lid would open. He’d been through the simulations. Though it had been light then. Now there was total, impenetrable blackness.

And the first flickers of fear stirred in his gut.

He stretched out his finger, which was all he could move, searching for the manual release switch. He pressed it. Nothing happened. He stabbed it again and again and still nothing. Fear crawled up his gorge, sour and bitter in the back of his throat.

Time passed.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, and he swallowed and licked his lips, tried again. “Is anyone there?”

His voice sounded hoarse and too quiet in the darkness. And no one answered. “Help!”

More time.

No sense of movement. No sounds except his ragged breathing. No heat. No cold.

How long had he been awake? A headache nagged at the back of his skull, and nausea churned in his stomach. He recognized the first signs of oxygen depletion and rising carbon dioxide levels. How long did he have left?

Panic took over, and he fought mindlessly against the restraints, spine arching, hands clawing at his sides until the sharp metallic scent of blood clogged his nostrils. Finally, exhausted, he collapsed back and lay panting, trying to get sufficient oxygen into his lungs.

He couldn’t die like this, trapped and alone in the dark.

Maybe it was divine retribution, from a God he hadn’t believed in for a long time.

Or had someone discovered his secret?

His heart hammered, and his breath was coming hard and fast now. He had to keep calm; the air would last longer, but he couldn’t stop himself gasping for each breath.

Help!

The word screamed through his mind as a convulsion racked his body.

Was this the end?

For him?

Or for the whole human race?

Chapter One

Five years later…

Logan blinked his eyes open.

Where the hell am I?

He was lying on his back, in what resembled a coffin, and his heart rate kicked up.

Balls!

He tried to move, to roll over, to sit up, but something held him in place, and panic clawed at his guts. He forced himself to breathe slowly. The walls were gray, but the ceiling was some clear material through which filtered a dim light.

And it came back to him. He was in a cryotube on board the Trakis One.

With the knowledge, his heart rate slowed. It felt like only moments since he had closed his eyes and drifted off into what he had suspected would be an eternal sleep. He knew the odds that this trip would succeed were not good. There was too much that could go wrong. He hadn’t expected to wake up.

And that did beg the question…

Why the fuck am I awake?

Were they still on Earth? Had something gone wrong? Had they aborted the mission?

Through the glass above him, he made out a movement. Looked like he was going to find out. He shook his head as much as the restraints would allow, blinking to clear his vision as the glass door of the cryotube was opened from the outside. The restraints popped free, and his pulse returned to normal.

“On your feet, sergeant.”

He recognized the voice, though it sounded different—a little rougher. And the face that came into focus above him was familiar but also different. Older. Considerably older.

Fuck me.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out, and he swallowed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “How long?”

“Since we left Earth? Four hundred and ninety-nine years, three hundred and sixty-one days.”

Logan pushed himself up, swiping off the monitors attached to his chest. An alarm screeched to life then cut out immediately. He swung his legs around so he sat on the edge of the cryotube, eyes closed, taking stock. His body felt heavy, his mind sluggish. Maybe that’s what happened when you slept for five hundred years.

Five hundred fucking years.

He shook his head again, trying to grasp that reality. Had they made it? They must have if they were waking him up. His heart was pounding again, but in a good way this time.

Although he’d never admitted it, even to himself, deep down he’d wanted this with a desperation he hadn’t experienced since he was a five-year-old kid at the orphanage, praying for someone to pick him. To take him home. That had never worked out, and he’d thought he had put those particular dreams behind him. Until the world had nearly come to an end. And with that had come the unexpected chance of a new life, a fresh start away from the old prejudice and intolerance. Maybe a chance to finally belong, not to pretend, but to actually be part of something big.

“Are we there?” Though he had no clue where “there” was. When they’d set off from a dying Earth, they’d had no destination in mind, just seeking out a world that could sustain life. Twenty-four ships. Each carrying ten thousand humans, the Chosen Ones, who would ensure the continuation of humanity. But how likely was that in the vastness of space?

“No.”

No? The anticipation oozed out of him. That didn’t sound good. So why was he awake?

He studied the man. Major Travis Pryce. He’d known him vaguely back on Earth. Hadn’t liked him too much, but then they hadn’t moved in the same circles—the major was English. And while Logan didn’t hold that against him, he was also a pretentious prick born with a silver spoon shoved up his ass. An officer who considered enlisted men as some sort of second-class citizens. They were near enough the same age—that was their only similarity—or they had been. Now the major had deep lines around his mouth, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his dark hair was streaked with gray. He’d also put on a few pounds. Not a good look in the tight-fitting uniform; the yellow shirt outlined an impressive paunch.

Most of the Chosen Ones were selected by a lottery. All fair and above board. Everyone had an equal chance. Well, that was the theory, though he was sure some people had more of an “equal chance” than others. But in addition to the Chosen Ones, the ships also carried crews, enough to cover ten rotations or approximately five hundred years.

And an army.

Apparently, the powers that be had decided some sort of military force would be needed once they got to wherever they were going. Maybe they were expecting hostile aliens. Little green men with laser guns. But aliens or not, soldiers were always needed. And who was he to complain? The army had been his way on board—otherwise he would have been left behind and long dead by now, even without the end of the world.

And the army was his life, had been since he joined when he was seventeen. It had given him the first home and security he had ever known. Though still not the acceptance he’d craved back then, before he’d finally realized that he would never fit in.

“Come on,” Pryce snapped. “Captain Stevens wants to talk to you.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, searching his mind for a reason he might have been woken early and coming up blank.

“Get up, get dressed, and I’ll brief you on the way.”

He nodded, but as he jumped to his feet, his legs buckled under him.

“Balls,” he muttered and grabbed the side of the tube.

Pryce snickered. “Don’t worry. You’ll be okay. Unlike the rest of us, all military personnel were allocated priority one tubes with regular muscle stimulation so you could come out fighting.”

Maybe that was it. Could they have been boarded by those hostile aliens? But if they had, they were being very quiet about it—maybe it was an alien thing. Plus, he appeared to be the only one who’d been awakened. “Is there someone to fight?”

“Hopefully not.”

Again—so why was he awake? Probably no point in asking the major. Likely it was need-to-know only—the army loved that phrase—and a lowly sergeant was unlikely to need to know.

He breathed deeply, his legs steadying beneath him. The light was dim, and he looked out across the cavernous chamber, rows and rows of cryotubes, each with a green light indicating the occupant was still alive. So at least that equipment had functioned as hoped.

There had been huge leaps in technology soon after it had become clear humanity needed to get away if they had any hope of surviving. The ships were built fast and were far more advanced than anything previously manufactured on Earth. No one on the outside knew where the technology came from. Some had suggested alien intervention. If so, the aliens had kept out of sight.

Logan turned around—he was almost feeling normal now—and reached beneath the cryotube for his bag. They had each been allocated a weight limit for the items they could bring with them, but Logan didn’t have a lot in the way of mementos. No family photos, no souvenirs of loved ones. He liked it that way. All he had with him were his uniforms, a couple of sets of civvies, and a well-read copy of the Count of Monte Cristo.

As he dressed, the lights flickered off, then on, then off again. He went still, the darkness only lit by the green glow from the tubes.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Power supply is on the blink. It happens. The cryotubes and main life-support systems have a backup power source, which is just as well, because the ship is falling apart.”

That wasn’t good. In theory, the ship could keep going indefinitely. The fuel was self-regenerating, the water reclaimed, as was everything else that could be recycled. But nothing lasted forever. Including the crews.

He dressed in the dark, was pulling on his boots when the lights flashed back on.

“Bloody hell, you look…young,” Pryce said.

The major had to be sixty-plus years. He also sounded a little bitter. Back in the day, everyone had wanted to be a member of the crew. Except Logan. He didn’t like the idea of spending fifty-plus years in the company of the same thirty people. He wasn’t that…friendly. Maybe Pryce was realizing if they ever got to their brave new world, he would be too worn out to appreciate it. Or maybe he’d given up believing that they would ever get there. That they’d literally fall apart before they found anywhere capable of sustaining life.

“You ready?” Pryce asked, and Logan nodded. “Then let’s go.”

Logan followed him out, down the long line of cryotubes. The air was cool with a faint musky scent, as if it had been breathed too many times. Through the glass panels, he could see the faces of the occupants sleeping peacefully. He’d had no dreams in five hundred years. Or if he had, he’d forgotten them. He’d learned at an early age that dreams were a waste of energy. Better to come to terms with real life than to fantasize about a better one. Finally, they reached a set of double doors. Pryce placed his hand on the scanner pad, and the doors slid open, leading into a wide corridor with gray curved walls and flickering strip lighting.

“So why am I awake?” he asked as the doors slid shut.

“We have a job for you.”

“Doing what?”

“What you’ve been trained for.”

That could mean a lot of things. Mainly he’d been trained to follow orders. Then to blow crap up and to stop the other side’s crap blowing up—but he hoped nothing was going to blow. An explosion in space sounded like a bad idea. But for the last five years—okay, maybe not the last five, but the last five he’d actually been conscious—Logan had been assigned to the military police. He’d been an assistant investigator for his unit—as high as a non-commissioned officer could go, which wasn’t very high. But what could they possibly have to investigate on a ship with only thirty people? Well, thirty conscious people.

“A couple of days ago, our security officer, Major Stuart Caldwell—you might remember him”—Logan did, the man had been a total fuckwit—“was on a routine investigation to the Trakis Two. His shuttle exploded on the return journey. He was killed. Which leaves us without a security officer and also with an open investigation.”

“What was Caldwell investigating?” Logan asked.

“Three cryotubes had malfunctioned. We do get that occasionally, but normally the alarms are triggered and we get the repairs done before anything bad happens. But in this case, the alarm malfunctioned as well. We got no warning, and the occupants were long dead when they were found. It looked like they’d woken up and couldn’t get out. They died of asphyxiation when the life support failed.”

“Christ.” He could definitely imagine what that must have been like. Trapped in a cryotube, not being able to move, to breathe.

“It’s unlikely there was any foul play, but we need to be seen to prove that.”

Yeah, the army was all about being seen to do stuff. “How did you discover them, if the alarms failed?”

“Pure chance. The ships run random diagnostic checks on one another’s systems. This particular one just happened to cover those tubes. But following that, we did an overall check on all the tubes and found that this wasn’t the first instance. There had been similar incidences on other ships.”

“Going back how long?”

“The first was five years ago on the Trakis Three. The last on the Trakis Seven a few weeks ago. The one picked up by the random audit was on the Trakis Two and had actually occurred somewhere in the middle of that time period.”

“Caldwell believed it was sabotage?”

“He thought it unlikely.” Pryce ran a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell, it’s amazing we haven’t lost more—we’re falling apart. But we have to be seen to cover all possibilities.”

“And that’s where I come in?”

“I suggested to the captain that you might be up for the job.”

Probably thought they would at least give the appearance of investigating, with no hope of actually stirring up anything controversial. Pryce had tunnel vision where enlisted men were concerned.

“Thanks.”

Pryce halted beside another set of double doors identical to the last. He turned to Logan with a slightly malicious grin. “My pleasure. Hey, why should I have all the bloody fun?” Then he pressed his palm to the panel, and the doors slid open.

Logan went still and stared into the room. This was obviously the bridge. Large and circular, the curved walls lined with giant screens. Screens that reflected a 360-degree view around the ship. He walked slowly forward, stopped in the center of the room, turned around.

He’d never given it much thought, because if he was totally honest, he’d never believed he would get to see it. But each screen showed a vast expanse of darkness filled with infinite pinpricks of light.

“Holy crap.”

It hadn’t really sunk in until now. He was actually in space.