The Awake Crew

By Pearl Kelly

Awake Crewman Tintorrel Cader Sigh, reticent and more at home with robots, suffers serious cabin fever during the harsh twenty-one year crossing to Gamma2: already the captain has lost her sanity, and the first officer turned into a paranoid and ruthless bully. To fight losing their minds, the Awake Crew play dangerous 'sanity games'. Tintorrel is invited onto a team with Jackie Shen, the capable Third Officer, and for her and the team, Tintorrel commits a serious crime. When Jackie is court-martialled for the theft, and the sanity games are strictly prohibited, Tintorrel must decide how far he will go to reinstate them, and must face his own past. A dark, claustrophobic science fiction short story capturing both the vulnerabilities and strengths of the human mind, and the ability to inspire hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pearl Kelly
• Release date: Mar 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311948250

Pearl Kelly

I am divorced, and have one daughter and she is the light of my life. I just want to learn how to live my life again. I am a bit shy to begin with, but once I get to know you; I am pretty awesome. I have a great personality, and love to make people laugh. I have a warped and sometimes dry sense of humor. I can crack myself up so much that I snort a little and my drink comes out of my nose. I have some baggage but I try not to let it rule me. I have cancer mets in my lungs. I have a positive outlook on life. I believe the glass is half full and merely waiting to be filled. I think everything happens for a reason and that karma is a bitch. I am funny, smart, stubborn, love to read and talk. I love my church and am an active church member.

Book preview

The Awake Crew

Pearl Kelly

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Pearl Kelly

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Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

Table of Contents

The Awake Crew

About the Author

Other science fiction short stories by Pearl Kelly

THE AWAKE CREW

Awake Crewman Tintorrel Cader Sigh shot through the extensive access passages of the starship Picketline’s storage decks on his secret mission, bent double in a transportation pod. He kept his head down, hiding his nerves. He wasn't good at it. Around him was the echoing, ever-darkness of the storage decks. Acre upon acre rushed past in a heartbeat, as the pod whipped along hanging under the sub-zero monorail like forbidden fruit.

Opposite him perched an extra-vehicular probe, which was part of his cover. The instrument panel of the transportation pod lit the probe faintly and eerily, making it look like it was glowing red.

To distract himself from his pounding heart, Tintorrel pulled a small item from his pocket: one of the miniature robots from his collection. This particular one was in the shape of an upside-down funnel with many tiny rollers beneath, and one incredibly long, rod-like telescopic arm that emerged sometimes, tipped with a tiny ocular. Just seeing the little robot sitting in his palm calmed him, like interaction with all robots did. It was the interaction with people that was more problematic.

This tiny, somewhat crude, funnel-shaped robot would help make his mission a success, or a failure. If it didn’t give the game away first, with its inevitable friendly chatter. The EV probe squatting opposite them, enveloped in red light, was intelligent enough to report Tintorrel. (There was no honour amongst robots. That was an entirely human concept.) If the probe reported Tintorrel for his small robot's curious comments, he’d be finished. They’d all be finished and done for.

He was about to break half a dozen Space Agency Rules without breaking a sweat on his secret mission. Not a good idea if you were on a starship in the middle of a long-haul, stuck in endless, empty space with nothing but the Space Agency Rules to govern your life. That was a bad idea. Unless nobody found out.

Few people signed up for an insipid job like 'Awake Crewman' on a terraforming starship. If, like Tintorrel, the crew were foolish or desperate enough to accept the many decades of interstellar travel without a return ticket, and with steeply mounting cabin-fever the order of the day, they did so because they were naturally solitary, or more importantly because they were desperate to escape from something, that nevertheless followed them wherever they went, like an overhanging shadow. Space Agency Rules could be cruel. Life on board a long-haul starship still carried penalties that were thought outmoded on all the planets such starships serviced. After sixteen wretched years into deep space, even the staunchest loner amongst the Awake Crew on the starship Picketline (and all other starships before her,) began to grasp their abject situation and inadvertently reached for something to prove they were actually alive. Generally, it had to do with breaking Space Agency Rules and accepting the horrific punishments meted out, to prove they were not mere machines.

Tintorrel was no exception. He'd come on board to escape and like the others had since learned to regret it. Only a few things kept him sane. One such thing was robots, including the miniature in his hand, which he’d whimsically called ‘El Fun’. It was his favourite.

Five years into the voyage there'd been a public knife fight in the mess, and both crewmen had died of their wounds, drowning in the uproar. After five years of pressurised rivalry, there was no other way to diffuse the situation. The incident had stirred something in Tintorrel: the knowledge that there was release from his plight, if only he could figure out how. He wasn’t the sort who sought confrontation or blood. But there was something, he knew, that could achieve release for him.

Until he found it, he’d have to wait and endure.

Ten years into the long-haul, the captain had tried to poison herself, and was now demoted to a figurehead, although she’d begged to be put under for the duration. The officers had ruled against that, decided that it was best she should retain the title, her cabin, and all formal representative duties for the sake of the crew. First Officer Lt Mendip Roofer was now the one who ran the ship as acting captain. He re-introduced harsher punishments, greater formality and snap inspections, believing, Tintorrel supposed every time he avoided the man's steely eyes, that it improved crew moral: if you hate the first