YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO dream in hypersleep. For some reason, some people did. Some scientists thought it had something to do with blood type. Spiritual people thought it had something to do with will of character, the inability to silence a strong mind. Regardless of the reason, Lithia always dreamt.

They were outside in the arboretum, finishing up for the day. Papa was supposed to be home from Titan later that afternoon. The family hadn’t seen him for a week and we’re excited to hear about his adventures on Jupiter’s moons.

Lithia remembered her mother chasing her through the garden. She was only eight years old and could hide in the bushes with ease but being caught meant another raspberry.

This dream never started the same way but always had the same ending. They were surrounded, dwarfed, by exaggeratedly large plants and flowers packed together in long rows stretching across the domed arboretum. Trusses spiderwebbed across the curved glass ceiling. Yellow light from a cloudy Venusian day outside lit their garden.

A tower of red brushlike bristles stretched upward, with an array of large leaves caught in mid fold. Water droplets on the plant’s skin reflected a warped image of Lithia and her mother.

“Mommy… what kind of flower is that?”

“Don’t you remember, Lithia? That’s the amaranth.”

“Oh yeah! It’s still alive!”

She remembered her mother smiling before kissing her on the cheek. A second later came the dreaded, giggle-inducing raspberry. “Of course it is. It will never fade. Even if cut.”

The dream was always the same. It always started off so happy, but like a movie with a bad ending, it turned into a nightmare. She always made sure to turn the movie off and wake up before that part, but in cryosleep, she didn’t have a “stop” button.

The dream suddenly took on a darker tone, the scene fast forwarded. Her mother and a twelve-year-old Bobby went running down the house hallway, the living room crackling with embers slowly consuming the room. The flowers outside turned into flames of all colors. Lithia was suddenly standing in the kitchen of the family house watching what was going on like a movie; she was powerless to act.

Her father was frantically loading a shotgun while  her mother pulled on his arm. “No, don’t! We can slip out the back. We can run from here. We can take the ship and head to Earth. We’ll be safe there!”

Her father was resolute. “No… This has gone too far. I’m not letting those people run us from our home! This has got to end here!”

The memory skipped ahead. Bobby was screaming, “Where’s Dad? Where is he?”

Her mother tried to open a window, but it was sealed. She picked up a chair and tossed it through the glass. The flames from downstairs hurried up the staircase with the breeze of new air. Her mother grabbed Bobby and shoved him through the window. The broken glass in the frame cut his legs, and he yelped in pain. She had no time to escape before the burning roof caved in, landing in her lap.

This was the end of the dream, the terrible ending, the nightmare Lithia had pushed far away out into the orbits of her mind for so long, but now she was vulnerable to it. All the times she hadn’t finished the movie came rushing back to her, ready for revenge, and it had forced her to watch this time.

...

Suddenly Lithia woke from her dream in a startled panic. She felt her chest tighten as the sudden shock of claustrophobia overwhelmed her. As thick beads of sweat poured down her face she pushed and pulled at the sleep chambers walls as a rush of terror washed over her body, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. The flailing finally landed her hand on the release lever by complete accident and the glass door over her lifted open. Lithia sat up groggy and gasping for air, she had forgotten she was on the Amaranth. She had forgotten all the events that had led up to this point for just a moment, before everything came flooding back. The sudden shock caused her to lean over the side of the pod and vacate her stomach right there on the deck.

Needless to say, this was a terrifying way to wake up. She took a few minutes to collect herself, a couple of stray tears seeping their way out from the corners of her eyes, before she felt calm enough to slowly climb out of her pod. Everything hurt like a hangover. Everything was so stiff. It took a couple moments to feel like she had control of her body again. The hypersleep chambers were designed to decrease the impact of atrophy, but even a month in hypersleep meant things were going to hurt for a little while.

She reached over to a compartment next to the monitoring systems of the pod. There was a little jar of “Fizzies” ready and waiting for her.

Just as soon as she had swallowed a couple of the bubbly tablets, and the terror of her dream had begun to subside, she looked over at the other pods in the room. Curiously, Cade’s sleep chamber door was open and empty.

What the hell is going on? Where was he?

Lithia checked Bobby’s pod. He was still safe and asleep.
Thank god

Then, as she turned away, she heard something… At first it was like the murmuring of a radio or the distant noise of ship systems sounding almost like a person talking but as she stood there, in her underwear in the dimly lit room and held her breath, she could definitely hear someone talking. He wasn’t speaking Terranese but rather a Frontier tongue. She only understood roughly three-quarters of the words, thanks to a life spent preparing to set out and see the stars. It was definitely Cade’s voice. He must have been talking to someone. What was he doing, sending a message? How was he awake?
Another wash of terror came over Lithia as Cade got a reply. It wasn’t the static-filled, garbled transmission noise. The other voice came from someone on board. The hairs on the back of Lithia’s neck stood on end. How did someone get on board? Where were they? The dread thickened when a third voice replied, “A month in hypersleep? Damn, I’ve got some Fizzies if you need ’em.”

Lithia slowly slid the door to the sleep pod room open and slunk through, trying to make as little noise as possible. She snuck across the galley toward the cockpit.

“The captain of this vessel may be waking up soon. I had hoped to have you guys launched again before that happened,” Cade said in the Frontier dialect.

“Maybe I should go reset them?” this from one of the other voices.

Lithia panicked with a rush of adrenaline. What the hell is going on? Who the hell were these guys, and what were they doing on her ship?

She scurried as quietly as possible back to the hypersleep room. Were these guys planning on stealing her ship? She looked around for a weapon and a place to hide.

Lithia pushed her pod door closed. The window glass was still foggy. She grabbed a pipe wrench hanging on a shelf. The environmental suits hanging on the far wall were a perfect place to hide. She peeked between the suits and waited for whoever it was coming down the hall.

A young guy in his early to mid-twenties entered. He was wearing some sort of reinforced environmental suit, with the helmet retracted. She caught a glimpse of his face as he passed by. He didn’t look like a pirate or marauder; he was downright pretty, really pretty.  

He walked over to the pod controls and reset a timer before peering into one of them.

Lithia thought about clubbing him over the head with the wrench, but she was worried, he might not go down with one swing, and if he made any noise at all, there was a chance that the others up in the cockpit might hear it.

“Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?” Lithia whispered, stepping up behind him, and shoving the handle of the wrench into his back. With any luck it would feel like the barrel of a gun through his suit.  

The man slowly raised his hands, “Easy! Easy! Don’t shoot. I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

In Lithia’s panic she had spoken in Tarran, but it seemed this man didn’t speak it.

“Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?” Lithia said, switching over to the frontier language she heard him and the others speaking.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured you said… Look, we’re just passing through. We didn’t intend to stay long.”

Lithia pushed the handle into his back as hard as she could, “Not answering my question… How did you get on board?”

“Our hopper was in trouble. We needed somewhere to dock, and your cyborg buddy was nice enough to answer our distress call. Our hopper is sitting in your hold. We planned to warm up for a few then take off again. We don’t mean any harm. Really.”

Lithia didn’t know how to react. It reminded her that Cade was awake, which shouldn’t be possible if he was in hypersleep, “Go to the cockpit. Slowly… ,” she urged, deciding she needed to take action.

Lithia walked slowly behind the man as they made their way back to the cockpit. She wasn’t exactly sure what her next step was, though she hoped the opportunity to blast Cade out an airlock would factor into it at some point, ideally after he explained everything, and maybe begged just a little bit.

“Umm… Gentlemen… I think we have a situation here.”

Cade and the other man in the cockpit turned around in their chairs, and for the first time lithia got a look at the other man who had come aboard. The other man was large, seeming to somehow make the bridge feel cramped, just by his presence. Lithia had to fight the urge to step back out of the cockpit when she saw him. Even sitting, he could almost look lithia in the eye, standing up, he’d probably have to be careful his head didn’t touch the ceiling.

IN Lithia’s mind, she quickly designated the two, the pretty one and the giant.,

“Where did she come from?” the giant asked.

“The sleep chamber must have defrosted when you guys came on board,” Cade said.

“She was in hypersleep? Oh, man, I heard this thing about a guy who used one of those things and woke up with a squid on his face.”

The giant looked like he would have continued, but the tense look the pretty one gave him stopped him short, “Oh! Right… Sorry… Focusing.”

Cade’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and he looked at lithia and the pretty one in a way that made Lithia feel profoundly uneasy. When he finally turned away, seeming to be satisfied about something, Lithia let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

“Congratulations… She’s holding you up with a…” he said a word in the language that Lithia didn’t recognize, but she had a sick feeling it meant, “wrench”.

The pretty one slowly lowered his hands, Lithia could still see some doubt on his face, Cade might have said it was a wrench, but some part of him, the part that could still feel it in his back, had to doubt, just a little bit. That was, until he turned around and saw Lithia standing there, half dressed, the head of her pipe wrench still clutched in her hand.

“It really was a wrench, for a moment, thought my new friend was trying to get me killed.” He said, eyeing Lithia up and down.

Lithia met those eyes and to her surprise they were rather non-threatening and even a little warm. They just didn’t say, “I’m here to kill you and steal your ship,” but rather something more akin to, “I’m here to rescue you.” She was struck by the look and the charming smile that came with it. If it wasn’t her imagination there was even a slight hint of wisdom about him. The type of wisdom of a survivor. Her anxiety washed away with the look and smile he gave her, he was downright disarming. If he hadn’t been stowing away on his ship, in the company of a giant, and Whatever the hell Cade was, he would be the kind of guy Lithia would want to get to know better.

“You’re probably not the first girl in her underwear to want to shoot him, ya know,” the giant said, the amusement at the situation clear in his voice. “Nice wrench, by the way. He’s been hit with worse.… The giant finished. looking over at Lithia.”

Lithia didn’t know what to do, yeah one of these hijackers was very cute, and they both had a charm about them that made Lithia sort of like them, but hijackers they were, and somehow lithia had lost control of the situation.

“I don’t know who the hell you guys are or what the hell you’re doing on my ship, but I need to know exactly what is going on, or so help me god, I will brain you with this wrench!” She said, in an attempt to get things back in a realm she understood.

“Which of us?” the giant asked, “Because if you’re braining Aurelius here, I might stay quiet, just so I can see that.” The giant joked, grinning evilly at the pretty one, the one Lithia now knew was named Aurelius.

“Dude!” Aurelius said, looking over at the Giant in disbelief.

“Relax, She probably couldn’t kill you with that wrench. Not on the first swing anyway.” The Giant said.

“Not helping.” Aurelius said, turning back to Lithia, where she still stood, brandishing the wrench at him threateningly.

“Listen, we’ll tell you everything, let’s put down anything heavy enough to crack my skull, and we can all go into the galley, and talk.” Aurelius said, giving Lithia a smile.

“That sounds less fun than what was going to happen here, but then again there might be food, you coming?” The giant said, turning to cade questioningly.

 “Things will probably go more smoothly if I do.” Cade said, and Lithia watched as he stood up from his seat and strode out of the cockpit, not bothering to wait for any of the rest of them.

The giant followed close behind, and Lithia and Aurelius had to step aside to make enough room for him to go past.

“You going to let me go now?” Aurelius asked.

“Hey they have Cheese-nips!” Lithia heard the Giant call back to his friend.

Next Chapter: Chapter 37: Crossing Paths