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<h2 id="chapter-1">Chapter 1</h2>
<p>You feel cold.<br>The first thing you feel, as you slowly come into consciousness is cold. You feel it in your bones and veins. Your entire existence is this absolutely chilling cold.<br>More senses come to you.<br>You hear pulsing of your heart, the pumping of the cryopod, the beeps of machinery bringing you back from the void.<br>You smell the sterile cold environment of the cryopod. It hurts your noise from the cold.<br>You taste metal in your mouth.</p>
<p>[[Claire Wakes Up]]<br>[[Tai Wakes Up]]</p><p>@@.head;Claire@@<br>You wake up. Slowly the dim light of the cryopod fills your vision. You clamber out of your pod, floating into the larger room it is contained in. A wave of nausea hits you and you find yourself steadying against the wall. You look around the room in the dim orange lights. You soak in the layout, 5 cryo pods bolted to the ground. Or at least what you call the ground, what is ground and what isn't is pretty subjective when you don't have gravity, and especially when you are nauseous from stasis. Slowly you let your senses come back. </p>
<p>You float over to one of the near by windows and look out into the star dotted void. You also catch your own reflection in the thick glass. You notice your dirty blond hair gently floating in the micrograv environment. You brush it with your fingers to get it a bit more presentable, though you are pretty sure you are the only one awake currently. It pays to be nice to yourself when you are awake alone.</p>
<p>You look at your light skin, with freckles across your wide nose. You look at your green eyes, and your eyes stare back at you. You look down at your clothes and, as expected, they are the thin cryo suit things you are made to wear when you go into cryostasis. They amount to a singlet and some shorts.</p>
<p>You slowly float over to the stairs in the middle of the room and quickly set yourself into autopilot, which in this case means checking on the ships own autopilot. You push yourself over to the large staircase in the middle of the room, and as you lazily float over to the middle of the room you absorb the rest of the room. Stacked up boxes for plants to be grown fill the room, you know you will probably be helping set them up as you won't have much to do for the week or so once you get closer to the system. This was the eigth time you have been woken up during the flight to make course corrections, and you have no clue how much of the 45 year journey has elapsed.</p>
<p>Eventually, you get to the stairs and push up, propelling yourself though the layers of the ship towards the cockpit. As you pass into the hub you notice something, or rather someone. You smirk looking at the bright red haired, tawny skinned, engineer. You quietly push off one of the railings and catapult yourself right into their back.<br>He shouts out a sort of cute yelp, and you laugh a little. </p>
<p>"Claire what the actual fuck‽ Don't you know how terrifying that was‽" They yell at you, and push you back sending both of you gliding across to opposite sides of the hub.<br>You stifle your laugh, and respond "I didn't think anyone else was up! You doing repairs or something?"<br>"No, we're almost there, the computer is waking everyone up" he informs you.<br>You smile, this is the day you have been waiting for.<br>"Finally" You say happily. "Guess we should probably get everything up and running then yeah?"<br>They nod at you.</p>
<p>[[You float to the cockpit to make sure everything is running smoothly->Claire checks the cockpit]]<br>[[Tai stays in the hub, enjoying their breakfast->Tai checks the engine room]]</p><p>@@.head;Tai@@<br>And then you open your eyes. You see the inside of a cryopod, dimly lit through the small window in front of your face.<br>You pull your arms out of their straps and pause a moment to feel how they float weightlessly in the pod.<br>You sit there for a few minutes, letting your brain adjust to the world of the living once again. Finally you hit the release button from the inside of your pod. The dim lights inside it brighten up a bit and you slowly remove the wires attached to you from beneath the thin shirt you are wearing. </p>
<p>Your eventually float your way out of your pod and allow your eyes to adjust to the dim room around you.<br>The room is lit only by the low power LEDs, and the starlight streaming in from the windows.<br>You see bays of lamp boxes, soon to house the plants that will keep you fed for most of your journey. You see the 5 cryopods, one that you just clambered out of and 4 others. You hear the sound of one of them beginning to pump and whirr as it brings another person back from the edge of death.<br>Or from the land of the dead itself, you never really were sure if those things were killing you or putting you to sleep like they claimed. You guess in the end it didn't really matter.</p>
<p>You decide to head to your quarters first, then to the hub to gather your thoughts. You effortlessly push off a near by grip towards the centre staircase, and then up the shoot. You travel up through the labs and to the quarters, gently manoeuvring yourself to the door to your room. You punch in the code only you and Len know, and close the door behind you as enter it. You don't bother turning up the lights, you prefer the low warm yellow that the low power lights emit. </p>
<p>You still feel cold from cryostaisis, and the thin clothing you have to wear for it doesn't help. You float over to one of the storage cupboards, and pull out a comfy shirt, tracksuit pants, and of course, fresh underwear. You make quick work of changing and then you grab your Band off it's charging station and affix to your arm, listening to the Bands satisfying click as the magnetic clasps bring it together around your forearm.</p>
<p>You make a few quick taps and check the ship logs. As usual there are a bunch of informational logs, noting small oddities in normal operation. You scroll down to the most recent and see the words you'd been waiting for these last few wake cycles.<br><code>Information: Approaching system ZX-263, initiating full wake cycle.</code><br>You float over to the mirror smiling, and finish getting dressed to your satisfaction by placing your pair of studs in your ears, and ring into your bottom lip.</p>
<p>You look into the mirror and see your short, red, messy hair. Your see your square jaw. Your tawny, patchy skin.<br>It's you, Tai.</p>
<p>[[And you are hungry->Tai goes to the hub]]</p><p>You float into the hub, and over to the kitchen section to get to the cupboard. You decide on re-hydrated <em>Nutrition Package 6: Oatmeal Flavor</em>. The idea doesn't make you the most happy in the world but it's something warm and something filling, and it's got honey in it and you like honey.<br>As you are waiting for your food, if you can call it that, to re-hydrate and reheat you suddenly feel a large object bump directly into your back. You yell out and with the grace of a frog falling off a rock you spin around to find the face of a strawberry blond haired white Australian.</p>
<p>"Claire what the actual fuck‽ Don't you know how terrifying that was‽" You push her back, sending the two of you gliding to opposite sides of the room.<br>She stifles a laugh and smirks at you. She knew exactly what she was doing, you're pretty sure.<br>"I didn't think anyone else was up! You doing repairs or something?" She asks you.<br>"No, we're almost there, the computer is waking everyone up" you tell her.<br>"Finally, guess we should probably get everything up and running then yeah?" She responds.<br>You nod at her, though you wish that you were still alone while you were fully waking up.</p>
<p>[[Claire floats up to check the cockpit, still in her cryopod clothes->Claire checks the cockpit]]<br>[[You head to the engine room to check everything there, but not before you eat your breakfast->Tai checks the engine room]]</p><p>@@.head;TAI@@<br>You watch Claire push off the wall and drift up to the cockpit and you hear a chime as the computer finishes preparing your food. Your retrieve your food from the machine and you grab a spoon from the cabinet.</p>
<p>As you eat, you look out the large window in the hub. It's the largest window on the ship. You think about earth, how much it has changed since you were there. It has been 50 odd years for them, and while it's been 45 for you cause of some science you don't particularly want to think about, that's still a long long time.<br>Is the mission even relevant any more? Did they find the signal to be some sort of error?<br>It doesn't matter any more, everyone you knew back on earth will be old age by now. and even if you were to turn around today, many may not even be alive by the time you get back.</p>
<p>You shake the thoughts out of your head. You should probably take your meds but they can wait.</p>
<p>You finish off your meal and you guide yourself to the center column, and float down the staircase. You pass through the levels of the ship, through the crew quarters, the labs, the soon to be hydroponics but currently where you friends and co-workers lie between the world of dead and alive. You float down through the storage and past the airlock, waving aside an intrusive thought. Finally you end up in the home of the engines, the generator, each blip and blop that makes the ship what it is. The warm, cramped area, that you call a second home.</p>
<p>You move through the maze of corridors made from machinery to your small station. You detach a panel from the wall and it flares to life. The same operating system that greeted you only an hour ago on your Band greets you again, showing you information about the health of the engines, the generator, and various systems around the ship.<br>You swipe though all the different things and move them to order panels dotted around the room, arranging them in the layout you prefer most, letting you build a visual library of where you can find everything.</p>
<p>You note down the repairs and maintenance that have built up over the five years since your last wake cycle.</p>
<p>Your band dings as Claire requests a line to you.<br>You accept the line and hear her voice clearly through the band.</p>
<p>"Hey mate, I'm gonna need you to warm up the engine so I can start the burn" she states.<br>"Sure, I'll get right on it" you respond.<br>"Thanks!" she says cheerily.</p>
<p>You close the line and float over to the panel you have thrown the engine information up on. You tap a few things and begin the boot up sequence, making sure to closely monitor the logs coming from it. Luckily it all checks out, and in 30 minutes or so it will be all booted up.</p>
<p>You set to work, floating around the large amount of machinery, opening up panels and making small repairs.</p>
<p>You don't recognize time pass, but soon you here the speaks over the ship crackle for a second, and Claire's voice comes over it and announces.</p>
<p>"Alrighty folk, we are going to be commencing our arrival burn in an hour, so make sure everything is locked down and you're not flipped upside down or anything when we do it. Thanks for your attention!"</p>
<p>You decide to finish up your maintenance, and head up to the hub to relax a bit before the burn.</p>
<hr><p>You drift up into the cockpit, with several stations and chairs dotted around. You float up to the pilot seat and gently guide yourself into it, strapping yourself in with a single strap over your legs to keep you in place. You drag over a screen and look at the data coming off it. It looks like you'll be at the system in a week, but you'll be starting your capture burn now so you don't shoot past the system and instead orbit the star at the center.</p>
<p>You begin on the calculations for the burn and the burns after that. While they were already calculated several times on the way here, you need to redo them again to make sure that there are no miscalculations, and any course corrections are made. small errors don't matter that much back home but out here even a single degree off can throw you years off course.</p>
<p>But first, you tap a few buttons on one of the screens and request a line to Tai. They answer the request after a few minutes.</p>
<p>"Hey mate," you greet him "I'm gonna need you to warm up the engine so I can start the burn"<br>"Sure, I'll get right on it" he says meekly.<br>"Thanks!" you tell him, as he quickly closes the line.</p>
<p>You stick on some music and get to work.</p>
<hr>
<p>Soon, a familiar red headed person floats from above into view, they are completely upside down from your perspective.</p>
<p>"Hey Len" you say.<br>"Hey Claire" they respond in their heavy Scottish accent.<br>Their long hair floats around them, seeming to threaten to entangle you, and setting her speckled face against a halo of orange-red fuzz.<br>"What are you up to?" They ask you.<br>"Math and physics" you tell her.<br>"Ahhh like school all over again," they joke, "glad I studied xenoarcheology instead of focusing on physics!"<br>"Yeah, that seems like a lot of fun, buuuut flying a ship? Being in contol of a giant thing moving at 431 million kilometers an hour?"<br>"Nope! Don't! I don't like to think about it!"<br>"Faster then anything we every previously inveted in millions of years of human invention"<br>"<em>Claireeee!</em>" Len shoves you gently<br>"Okay okay!" You laugh playfully, "I'll stop!"</p>
<p>The two of you talk a bit longer, before Len proclaims that they will leave you to your work, and they float away down and out of the cockpit. </p>----
<menu><<link "Settings">><<script>>UI.settings()<</script>><</link>> • <<link "Restart">><<script>>UI.restart()<</script>><</link>></menu>!!Chase the stars
A story about humans meeting aliens for the first time in the 22nd Century
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!!! [[Begin the story!->Chapter 1]]
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