Chapter 1

Oh my God! Did I have a headache! Nobody told us back in training that we would have this kind of reaction to waking up from cryogenic sleep. Shit! I feel like I must have been out for 100 centuries, instead of the two centuries that I had been scheduled for.

Well, since I have finally been awakened, we must be on our final approach to Spica IV. I just hope that the recon (reconnaissance) department got it right this time. Spica IV is supposed to be an Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks Zone (neither too hot nor too cold) and with plenty of available water. The 223 spaceships in our colonization fleet should have the planet ready for occupancy within the targeted 30 years if recon was on the ball. Well, it's time to get up; I wonder where everybody is?

The usual SOP (standard operating procedure) is for a doctor and a nurse to be available to help each sleeper get the details straight and to make sure that pulse, blood pressure, etc. are correct before she or he tries to stand up. I don't see any one else in this sleep hold, and it is 100 by 40 meters of floor space closely packed with sleep chambers. It looks like all of the chambers that I can see from here are open, but there may be some behind me not opened yet.

Oh, well, I feel fine, so I might as well get up. All of the indicators on my medical board are in the green, so I guess the computer thinks that I am alive even if my headache makes me wonder about how much longer that will last. The fact that I am naked is meaningless at this stage, so I will get up and look around. There is a comm (communication) panel at the far end of this sleep chamber, so that's probably where I should head. I wonder if there has been some sort of screw up, and I was awakened too late. I can find the answer to that and a lot of other questions as soon as I can get to the comm station.

Hey, what happened to the gravity!?! I lost all feel of gravity as soon as I left my bed. Why had the ship's gravity field been cut off? That is never a standard practice, so there must be some emergency going on. I had better check in right away.

"Computer, this is Space Marine Gunnery Sergeant William Ashford, SM978431-9611 reporting for duty. Where should I go to find my unit?"

"There must be some error: Sergeant William Ashford, SM978431-9611 was reported killed in the rebellion of 2782, over 19,000 years ago. You are the first contact I have had from troop carrier Harmony Goodson in that time. Please make a full report."

"Computer, I am William Ashford, and I just woke up from cryogenic sleep. I know nothing of what happened since five days before liftoff on July 17, 2405. From what you say, it must be something like the year 22,000. Please tell me the exact date."

"The exact date is January 13, 22011."

"Oh my God! What happened?"

"On December 11, 2782, as the first sight of Spica IV was made, a rebellion of the 4^th Brigade of Space Marines took place. The rebellion was led by General Barnabus Arnold. Very nearly every human aboard the fleet was killed before the rebellion was put down. Your ship was one of the first ones attacked, and the rebels cut off all life support to the sleeping cells during the course of the attack. Somehow, your cell must have been overlooked in that process. A check of my current records show that your cell was opened by the timing out of the fail-safe system.

"The fleet was left with too few humans to keep it operating, so as many as possible went back into cryogenic sleep with the timers disabled. My records show that most of the humans have died, but there are a few still alive in their cells. In some cases, the people on a ship chose not to resume cryogenic sleep and continued to stay active within their ships.

"In order to prevent another occurrence of a situation similar to the rebellion of 2782, I have cut off all communication among the ships of the fleet. To my knowledge, the people aboard each ship think that they are the only members of the fleet who are still alive. The replicators have been active so that each ship has had a sufficient supply of food, water, and clean air.

"My records show that you are the highest ranking member of the Space Marines still alive, so I am prepared to take orders from you. What would you have me do, Sir?"

"Wow, well, the first thing you need to do is to tell me where I can find a uniform and weapons. I hope I don't need the weapons, but I don't want to be caught totally unprepared."

I was directed to a storage room where I found a uniform and a pistol. I figured on worrying about the rest of my gear after I had explored this ship. I checked all of the cryogenic cells aboard the ship, and I did not find any more sleepers. There were no bodies lying around because the robot cleaners had long since cleaned the decks.

It took me four days to be sure that I was the only one left alive on the troop ship Harmony Goodson. My next step was to check into the status of some of the other troop carriers. Just possibly, I could find some company on one of them. I went to the transporter room and had myself transported to the troop carrier Igor Slaviski.

I found pretty much what I expected: nobody was alive. Well, that was a bust, so I had myself transported to the N'Bali Maliki. Here, my luck was a Hell of a lot better! I found one Space Marine still alive. She was Private Susan Zalat, and was she happy to see me! She had been awakened the same as I had, but she had not been able to activate the comm unit. She was about to go crazy in fear that she was the only person alive, so you can imagine how enthusiastically she greeted me.

She was naked because she had not been able to get a locker to open for her, and I thought from the way she greeted me that I was about to be raped. Hell, I was as horny as she was, so we let off some repressed steam with a joyous fuck. After that, we got back to business. There was no need for me to search this ship because Susan had already done that in a desperate effort to find some company.

We ate a snack from the food replicator and had the computer transfer us to the last of the four troop carriers, the Rachel Morris. Again, we struck out! We could not find anyone aboard, either moving around or in one of the cryogenic cells. Okay, time for a council of war among the active duty Space Marines.

Susan and I made ourselves comfortable and discussed the situation. We both realized that we could not do much to reestablish our version of the human race just on our own. Oh, sure, we could make babies now that Susan's birth control injection had long since worn off, but we were not Adam and Eve, and we had no intention of trying to act that way.

According to the computer, there were other people still alive among the ships of the fleet, and we should be able to contact them. The catch was that we really did not know what to expect from people who had been isolated for thousands of years, so some negotiation probably would be necessary. In fact, some of it could be at the business end of a gun.

Our guns were a modification of conventional firearms in that we had special bullets that would damage flesh just as regular bullets would, but they would not damage vital parts of the spaceships. I don't know how that worked; all I knew was that it did, and that was good enough for me. The guns used compressed air instead of gunpowder to fire the bullets, and the air and each bullet were created on the spot by miniature special-purpose replicators.

Anyway, we asked the computer for a recommendation, and we were jumped to the Arthur Harris. We were told that the people on this ship had been members of a religious cult on Earth that the government considered harmless, but was pushing to escape the "oppression" of the "gentiles" that surrounded them. They had paid for and outfitted their own ship, so its design was a bit different from the standard.

We popped into a transporter room that we found deserted, but that was not unexpected. These people were certainly not expecting visitors, and probably did not want them in any case. However, we did need to check them out.