And the Suns Never Rise: A Story of Alpha Centauri

Next of Kin

As soon as the shuttle docked with Hope Christiana unstrapped herself and headed for the exit. Since they docked the shuttle to the spine of the starship, she was in zero-gee for the first time in her life.

Normally, people had trouble navigating in the weightless environment, but not Christiana. She was so focused on getting to Haruhi's side that she barely noticed the guide that they had assigned to her to make sure that she went to the proper ring. If she hit and bounced off a bulkhead, it barely registered.

"Stop, you might injure yourself!" the guide warned. Christiana just ignored her. Following the markings on the doors she passed, she quickly left her guide behind her. Of course, she wasn't following ship protocol of hooking her auto-retractable belt carabiners every five emms. In the event of the main ship drive firing, the corridor would suddenly become a pit and only the carabiners would keep Christiana from injuring herself in each ten emm section. If she was lucky, she would only suffer a broken arm. If unlucky, then the blonde could break her neck.

Christiana knew she was taking a risk, but her mind was currently on one thing, getting to Haruhi's side as quickly as possible. It was only when she arrived at the lift room to the second ring that she realized the error of her actions. The lift required a code to enter. As she smashed her fist against the control panel in frustration, a voice came over the panel's built-in com'.

"I'll meet you at crew lift room one of ring two in five minutes," came a familiar voice. "Hurry, the lift door will only stay open for sixty seconds."

Upon hearing this, Christiana bolted to the door in question as soon as it opened. When the lift doors closed, arrows of light appeared that illuminated in sequence. It did not take her long to realize that the direction that they were pointing towards showed the direction that was soon to be 'down.' After rearranging herself properly, she slowly felt gravity return. First, it was a gentle pull, but it increased as the car moved outwards to the ring. After a few minutes, it finally reached its destination. There the spin gravity was point three eight gee or roughly the surface gravity of Mars.

When the lift door opened, Christiana was trying to walk in the unfamiliar gravity. She found it a lot harder to move now than she did in microgravity.

"Come out of there. You are blocking the lift," said the very familiar voice of her close friend.

 "Miss Harrison!" she cried as she jumped out of the small, moving chamber.

Miss Harrison caught her young protégé and hugged her tight. "Come on, let's go see Haruhi. Please don't be shocked by her condition. She is receiving the best and most advanced care. Also, be careful what you say around her even while she is sleeping. She does not know how badly she is injured. They have administered a pain block so she cannot feel from her neck down. We have also put up a screen in front of her so she can't see her lower body. Finally, we can't keep her awake for more than a few minutes at a time." Then Miss Harrison let the hug loosen and began walking to the main sickbay.

"She can speak?" Christiana asked, her voice full of the hope that she had been suppressing since she heard how badly Haruhi was injured.

"Yes, but only for a few minutes at a time," Harrison reminded her. "That's important because she gets a treatment whenever we wake her up and we can't talk to her for long."

"That's a good sign. Right?" Christiana asked, tagging along as best as she could in the low gravity.

"Yes, it is a good sign, but I will let you be the judge," Miss Harrison said, not meeting Christiana's gaze. "Come on, it's not much further now."

"Here is the observation area. When the time comes to wake her, we can enter the chamber with her." Miss Harrison explained.

"We can't see it from this angle, but her left arm is mostly intact," Miss Harrison said with another hug.

Then the older girl stood and turned on a holoprojector. "Here, this is the most recent scan of her body. As you can see, her arm somehow survived the accident, but her other appendages weren't so lucky."

"How exactly did she get hurt?" Christiana asked as she climbed to her feet to look at the image.

"The seat that she was in was facing out one of the side windows. So what happened was the tail rotor blade became detached, and it cut off her outstretched limbs before going forward and killing the pilot," Miss Harrison explained. "If she had been seated a quarter of an emm forward, then Haruhi would have met the same fate."

"Thank goodness for that!" Christiana exclaimed. "What is her prognosis?"

"Honestly, it's not great." Miss Harrison replied. "We hope she will respond better if she knows you are here with her. There are several experimental treatments we can try, but we would need to either get her approval or that of her next of kin before we go down that route."

"Who is the next of kin?" Christiana asked.

"You are Christiana, you are."