Chapter One: Taylor Henderson

I took a deep breath, the cold, crisp air flowed through my lungs, just as relaxing as ever. I could feel the ice on my face, the sunlight filtering through created a kaleidoscope of color behind my eyelids. But something wasn't right with the near perfect scene, something small was off. I wiped the ice off my face and opened my eyes, panic striking me like a bullet as a scream escaped my lips, realizing I was in a container of some sort. Where was I? What was going on? After a few seconds, I remembered my training from the Air Force. Breathe. Think it through, panic would only make the situation worse than it already was. I thought about why I might be in this icy container. I took only a few seconds to figure it out. The ship, I was in a cryogenic stasis pod onboard the exploration vessel Discovery one.

I felt around for the emergency release on the inside of the pod, the only reason the crew would be coming out of stasis is for something really good, like finding a habitable planet or really bad, like the ship was disabled in a meteor storm. My pod opened as I pulled the emergency release. Seven other pods were in the small room on the aft of the spacecraft, one pod open, one pod empty and the other six still occupied by the rest of the crew. I tumbled out onto the cold, grated floor of the cryo storage center, my arms and legs numb from not being used for who knows how long. I checked my watch, the digital display read June 18, 2091. I Was shocked to see the date like that, 2091. I quickly did the math. I had gone into stasis in 2021, which meant I had been frozen for 70 years. Everyone I had known back home would be long dead. I swallowed the dread and grief that I was suddenly inflicted with and stood up.

Before I could leave the room, a loud hiss came from directly behind me. I spun around as Jennifer Richardson, the last person I'd want to be stuck on a ship with

, stumbled out of her pod, not even phased from the stasis. Her chocolate colored hair still had bits of ice caught in it. She flashed her perfect teeth at me before brushing the ice from her hair. It took all of my self control not to make her perfect teeth not so perfect with a strategically placed punch. She brushed past me and out the door, heading through the corridors to the front of the ship. I waited a brief second as the rest of the crew began to stir within their pods, then I turned on my heel and headed after Jennifer.

I walked past the airlock first, followed by the storage room and crew bunks before finally making my way into the command bridge, where the ship was controlled. I took in the sight of the computers and the window that panned around the entire room. A wrinkled old man was at the main navigational computer, Jennifer was already working away at another one. The elderly man barked at me to take control of the ship. It was at that moment I noticed the many warnings flashing around the entire bridge. I ran to the nearest console, just to my left, a galactic map, which told me the ship was currently in the Alpha Eridani galaxy.

I glanced back at the elderly man. His uniform revealed him to be the commanding officer of the ship, Captain Cole Tanson He was nearly unrecognizable. Where there had once been a shiny brown head of hair sat only a few white pieces of fluff. In place of his young, strong face was a wrinkly mass of skin. Where his straight teeth once were sat toothless pink gums. I looked back up at the warnings as the rest of the crew entered the bridge. The warnings revealed we were out of fuel, and we were caught in a gravitational field, due to crash onto an alien planet, which soon filled the entire window.