Hello!

I'm posting the first small chunk of my prologue. I have a few beta readers following along on the writing process but they're mostly focused on core concepts and overall plot. Would be curious to have some folks read through this from a more critical, technical angle. Get an overall vibe check. Ignore the weird Reddit formatting, why they just can't do normal paragraphs I will never know.

Thanks!

The first thing she heard was the ship’s alarm.

It echoed around the edges of her perception, dragging her upwards towards full alertness. She blinked, the dim, pulsing glow of the decanting chamber caused her vision to swim. She was vaguely aware of someone calling her name. “Isha, Isha can you hear me?” She struggled to pick out the words. “Isha, I need you to breathe, take a breath. Isha do it now.” She felt the constriction in her chest, her newfound vision started to close in, bright flashes of light amidst mounting panic. She fell to the floor on her hands and knees, the deck beneath her becoming a single point of focus.

Breathe. She gasped, taking in a lungful of warm, humid air—then she was coughing, retching up fluid onto the metal grating. Her vision slowly began to clear, and the dizziness began to recede. Her breathing started coming easier, and she settled into a rhythm, trying to bring down her heart rate.

She tilted her head sideways and looked up, Arthur—the ship’s doctor—was leaning over her, one hand resting lightly on her back. He gave a small smile, then stood and walked over to the room’s other open pod. Captain Morris was already sitting upright, the big man leaned his back against the bulkhead, taking a long drink from a fluid pouch. He looked towards Isha, tapped the pouch and pointed to the wall behind her. She nodded, and gingerly crawled her way towards the storage rack. She began pulling down supplies, grabbing her own pouch and taking a sip. The fluid wasn’t exactly pleasant, but she knew the warm liquid contained the electrolytes, minerals and sulfates her body was sorely lacking after over two years in cryogenic stasis.

She could hear Arthur speaking quietly to Morris on the other side of the room as he disabled the alarm. The Captain was nodding, his eyes already alert and calculating. He made his way to his feet, and using Arthur as support, was able to limp over to the bench at the far side of the room, where he began stripping out of his cryo-suit.

Isha had to admit she was surprised to see how well his body was holding up—his well-muscled frame looked much the same as it had going into the tank. Cryogenic stasis had come a long way in the last few decades, what had once been a pipe-dream of science fiction was now a legitimate option for long-term space exploration.

She looked down at her own suited hand and flexed it, it felt good, she figured—considering she hadn’t moved it in over nine hundred days. Using the bulkhead to brace herself, she made her way slowly over to the bench, settling in next to Morris. Arthur flitted between the two of them: asking basic medical questions, taking blood samples, checking pupil dilation. After a time he declared them both fit to serve and sent them off to get cleaned up.