Slowly, rubbing the long sleep and the weariness from her eyes, Mikoto Mishida sits up in her cryo pod. Slowly opening her eyes for a second time she noticed the crystal celing, floor and walls all around her plus all the other cryo stations still hosting civilians asleep. She knew that normal people would have a very hard time waking up after so long so she decided to take it easy for now. Deciding not to move for a bit she slowly raised her arms and moved them around to get blood flow back in them followed by her legs.

Coughing a bit she looked around as she slowly got off the pod and stretched. "Ah... perfect just perfect what a beauty sleep" she smiled and stretched her back. She had no idea what was going on, and why other crypods were still hosting people sleeping but she would not question the people who were in charge of the ship. She looked around not really sure where the other people were at that moment. "Earn a opportunity to visit the vast space and be the first to colonize a new planet... yea right" she looked around and sighed. "Hello?... anybody here?" she called to nowhere in particular and everybody.

Good afternoon Mikoto,

A voice through the audiosystem of the ship.

I am Marco, the ship AI. I am here to assist.

You will find a grey jumpsuit in the compartment under your pod. Please proceed to the decontamination showers and then get to the medical facility for a check up.

Shrugging "Why others are not awake yet Marco?" she walked to the chamber under her pod and quickly found what it meant. Shrugging she looked around until she noticed the door that was now opened. She had no idea what did she had that she had to be decontaminated but whatever. She looked at the shower and got through the showering process before putting on the outfit that was on the pod leaving the old one behind where it supposed to go. Finally she approached the medic station hoping for a quick checkup since she felt fine.

Hissing loudly, 24 pods depressurise. 24 medically schooled crewmembers slowly wake up.

From:  Medical

   Jen had stopped by Security to pick up her evidence collection kit.  She located pod number 1404 and began to sweep it carefully for evidence, including trapping exfoliated skin cells for DNA testing in her mini-vac.  After she finishes with 1404, she is also going to sweep 4997 for evidence.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:13, Fri 24 Mar 2017.

Jenn finds minute fragments of skin in both pods, fragments that should be able to reveal at least some DNA.
More importantly though, the inside of pod 4997 contains a small device attached to the coolant unit. It is matte black, about the size of a zippo fuel lighter and has a single led light next to a small switch. Clearly it is not standard issue as none of the other pods have it.

For a time Micaela remained where she was. You couldn't just freeze someone and expect them to thaw six years later. They had to be pumped full of drugs to keep the body stable and prevent cell death. And the thing about drugs is that your body can't get rid of them if your heart isn't beating. So it took a minute, several in fact, for the young woman to rouse. It was like waking up from a dream that didn't want to let go. It would have terrified her had she not been heavily sedated to begin with.

When she could finally move she felt heavy and sore, like she had just finished a full body workout under 1.5g. But by the time she had regained her mobility, her head had also cleared, and she knew where she was and what was happening. They had reached Alpha Centauri. Or, more precisely, they had reached the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the third star in the trinary star system that was Alpha Centauri.

They had made it, and if they were lucky they wouldn't be alone.

Sitting up Micaela's attention was immediately drawn to the bottom seem of her cami rubbing up against her stomach. The fabric was soft and cool, and her brain reveled in the sensation after being dormant for so long. With her left hand she reached up to touch the fabric with her fingers, further delighting her senses and idling wondering what the first moments of wakefulness would be like for those that had chosen to go into cryo with rougher undergarments or none at all.

She lingered for another moment, remembering the instructions to take as much time as she needed post cryo, before finally pulling herself out of the chamber. Her pod had been up on the top level, and it awarded her a vista that seemed to stretch off in either direction forever. And then her heart skipped a beat. She was alone.

That wasn't right. She wasn't in the last round of civilians to wake up, but she also wasn't in the first. She should be seeing dozens of people waking up all around her, but instead the chamber was eerily still and quiet; every cryo pod she could see clearly still closed up.

"Marco?" she called out, the word more hushed than she intended it to be. "Marco, what's the situation?"

Good afternoon Micaela.
The situation as you call it is considered stable. We have numerous crew members awake at this time, with more to follow. You will find clothing below your pod.
Time now is 16.54, on 17-2-2157. CS-8 Marco Polo has overshot the target Alpha Centauri by 115 years and nearly 110 lightyears.
Please proceed to the decontamination showers for cleaning to have all the chemicals washed off, and then to medical for a check-up.
I hope you have a pleasant day.

Just after hearing Marco's reply Micaela noticed a woman dressed in black a few rows further examining a pod.

   Lt. Maxwell heard the gentle pop of the seal of a cryo pod having reanimated its corpsicle.  It reminded her of the sound made when opening a Tupperware container to get some leftovers.  Jen activated her secure computer link.  "Marco, I need an engineer down here immediately to analyze what looks like an unauthorized modification to pod 4997."

   Jen marked the samples taken from this pod, then took a few shots of the small black module with the light and the switch using the small digital camera from the kit.  She made a mental note to recharge the little camera back at the office.  It had been a long time since its last recharge.

Micaela's smooth exit from the cryo tube faltered a bit at this. Annoyance clouded her thoughts a moment later when the AI didn't elaborate, but she let it go just as quickly as it had come. While it would have been obvious to any human that she would want to know more than just that they had missed their destination by 110 light years, that wasn't necessarily obvious to the AI. They just did what they are told. Nothing more and nothing less.

She was about to ask for a more detailed debriefing when the repercussions of their situation caught up to her. Earth was gone. At least, the Earth she had known. There would still be a roiling mass of super-heated rock, but it would be millennia before the mass would reach equilibrium again and cool enough that humanity could return to it. And even then it would be a dead rock. Her people and their history was gone now, all except for them. Maybe some of the other colony ships had survived, but it was unlikely she would ever find out in her lifetime.

She shook her head softly, trying to chase the thoughts away so she could focus on the matters at hand. From beneath the cryo tube she withdrew a grey jumpsuit and a pair of shoes. As she slid into them she pressed Marco for more information.

"Query. What was the cause for us missing our destination? Query. What triggered the reanimation of the crew at large? Query. What triggered my specific reanimation? End queries."

By the time she had put in her requests she had finished dressing. Mostly. She didn't zip up the jumpsuit if she was just going to take it off for decontamination. A moment later she was headed towards the showers, hoping the AI would be more useful this time.

Answer: AI malfunctioning. Cause: Sabotage.
Answer: Safety protocol dictates wake captain when ship reactor overheats.
Answer: System glitch.

That was not the answer she wanted to hear. If Marco was compromised they could all be in a lot of trouble. And while she could handle the coding of the AI for her drones, Marco was so far out of her league that it might as well be magic. Still, no use falling to pieces over it. That would be... unhelpful. Glitch or not, she was up now and she'd find a way to help.

Five minutes later, her skin still damp and her long brown hair sticking wetly to the back of her jumpsuit in an unflattering manner, she stepped out of the cryo hold and started towards medical.

>> To: Medical Facilities

"You needed an engineer Ma'am?" An ebony skinned young man, barely twenty, stands and salutes as Jennifer turns to face him. "Name's Abele Watan, engineering corps. At your service. There was something about a foreign device in one of the pods?"

   Lt. Maxwell returned the salute.  "Yes.  Thank you for coming so quickly.  I identified a small device on pod 4997.  I examined three other pods and they had no device.  I've already taken pictures of the device."

   Jen pointed out the device without touching it.  "I'm conducting a criminal investigation and this device could be an important clue.  I need to know what this is and what it does.  I would like you to wear these gloves when you examine the device.  It may contain trace evidence that I need to preserve."

The youngster quickly goes to work, putting on his own latex gloves, taking a first glance inside the pod.

"Hot Damn Ma'am!"

He looks back up at her in utter amazement.

"Never thought I'd see one of these. A ZX-6 override. I heard they used them in the Kongolese unification campaign of 29, always hoped to see one for real."
There's pure excitement in his voice. "For a hacker, this is a goldmine."

"What you have here Ma'am is a bonafide covert operations universal system override. Attach it to a device, like say a pod, and override its systems at a set moment. Within set parameters it can take over any system, for a few simple commands that is."

He carefully removes it.

   Jenni held open an evidence bag as the place for Abele to drop the ZX-6 override.  "I've got some questions, Abele.  May I call you Abele?  You are saying that someone could have used the override to set this pod to activate at any time of their choosing, even years after the ship left Earth?  How expensive were these overrides and how difficult were they to locate?  Also, what group used them in the Kongolese unification campaign?"

"You can call me Abele Ma'am. Its my given name," the kongolese engineer replies. He studies the device a bit before putting it in the bag.
"You understand how it works yes. This device can override any and every system given the right set of short commands. So yeah, someone could use this to activate a cryo pod outside of it's set parameters.  Just place it in the pod, near the memory-banks, around about the place you found it. If programmed correctly it will then take over and mimic all the usual functions of the pod, but with new parameters. The Kongolese liberation army used them to sabotage public transport, access banks, whatever they could use them for to undermine the government of Warlord Nbelele."
He shrugs as he closes up his toolbox.
"I have no idea what they cost. A hefty sum I'm sure. KLA usually got them from their CIA friends. They loved to help undermine the lord."

   Jen sealed the evidence bag and scribbled a short code number on the bag as Abele spoke.  "Thank you for your help.  You are sworn to silence as this is an ongoing investigation.  If this creates problems for you, please refer any questions to my office.  Also, may I call upon you, should I need assistance in the future?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:23, Tue 28 Mar 2017.

"At your service Lieutenant," the engineer smiles as he returns to his post.

  Lt. Maxwell took a few more minutes to finish her work on collecting the crime scene evidence.  She closed up her evidence collection kit and headed back to her office to finish logging in and securing the evidence.


To:  Security Section

<< From: Cargo hold

The system that Blake had described to Micaela was a type of black box. The central AI of the Marco Polo clearly had access to the primary systems in cryo, it had been the program that had awoken them after all, but there was a secondary system that documented everything that happened as well. This database would record all of the output from all of the pods, compiling it and storing it in case of malfunction. Marco could read the data, but couldn't write to it. So if Marco was compromised and was not reporting the data properly from this sub-system, a human operator could skip Marco entirely and take a direct look.

Micaela made her way to a remote observation and control room that was connected to the cryo chambers. These small rooms would only hold a few people, but generally keeping an eye on human popsicles wasn't a terribly taxing job. After swinging the messenger bag around to her front, she settled into one of the seats and opened it up. A moment later she was physically connected to the logging sub-system.

There were a number of ways she could try to sort the data, but she tried to start simple. If the system was worth a damn it would already know what was normal behavior and what was not, so all she had to do was search for the warning/error flag. Her fingers dancing over the keys, she went digging.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:54, Sat 01 Apr 2017.

The digging doesn't take all that long. Within five minutes Micaela finds the first error.

Pod 4997. March 2, 2042. Unplanned depressurisation and opening. Occupant left pod.

The second error she finds just a minute later.

Pod 2030. December 18, 2098. Coolant error. Pod shut down. Occupant deceased.

So one person woke up roughly on time, even though the log indicates it was unplanned, presumably upon arrival near Proxima Centauri, 115 years ago. 56 year later there appears to be a mechanical error and someone dies.

Still not trusting Marco's primary system she tries to find the identity of the man or woman in pod 4997 and 2030 herself. She hoped the logging sub-system contained that info, but it was certainly possible that it didn't.

The logging systems show a gap from march 2042 untill july 2043. There is no record in the systems of the occupant in 4997. The person in 2030 was a 28 year old Irish man named Carl Roirdan, a civilian, winner of the lottery, farmer according to records. His wife is in pod 2031.

Micaela was surprised to find the gap. Gaining write access to this sub-system would take a hell of a lot of work. Maybe whoever had done it had slipped up and left something behind.