You awake in perfect darkness, perfect silence.  Sound and Light cannot exist in this place as they require motion. You are cold, down into your bones where the ice grip the very core of you.

Stasis. Absolute Zero.  

A horrible awareness that the waking mind is not meant to experience this awful, total, stillness.  

Something is wrong.  Something has gone wrong with your Cold-Sleep and you are... aware.

Then noise. The gentle hum of machinery, dim in the background. The gentle lightening from perfect, terrible darkness to a more normal absence of light.  

Then the sudden slice of brilliance, the lid of your Cold-Sleep tube cracks open letting in a nova of photons as your body relaxes suddenly from its stasis imposed rigidity, you blink for the first time in days, months...years?  You breath.

The air is hot. Too hot, and stale.  The light that seemed so perfectly bright a second ago now seems weak. The lid finishes open and you don't see the expected nurses and technicians looking down on you, the ship's crew waking you from your slumber.  You only see the feeble light of a battery fed emergency light, feel the hot stale air that isn't circulating properly... life support failure. Power failure. Emergency.

But no one is running, no shouting... the ship seems almost as silent as that perfect, awful moment of Stasis. There is only you. You and three strangers, each climbing out of their own Stasis Pod.

I grab my head and moan a bit, and then take a good look at my fellows of whatever fortune this is. I hop a bit, testing the gravity, shaking out my arms and legs getting ready for whatever crisis this seems to be.

Need friends, fast. I look meaningfully to my 'allies of convenience', trying to catch sight of eye recognition from anyone. That is when I will slap my chest, saying my name clearly, "Fimion. Fimion Jalunda."

Then I will try to figure out our common language: "Who of you understands what I am saying now?"

The man in the robes climbes out of his oversised coffin.  And gives a couple deep booming rattling coughs.  Looking at his cell mates he quickly runs his hands down his robes, flowing Ivory over a close fitting black jump suit.  

He finds what he was looking for and pops a pill into his mouth.  He gives the hooked knife a practiced twirl before sliding it back into its wrist sheath.

"I hate going under the ice, leaves a horrible taste in my mouth.  My batman told me he packed for every occasion and yet here I am under dressed."

You Find that you can understand one another though the words you hear are foreign to your ears. It seems linked to your headache in some way."]

"Good. I understand you." Looks at the talking one, "I am Fimion. What is your name?" and walks toward, offering a hand to shake in greeting.
[regardless what happens]
"This does not look right. We might have to work together to get systems up and figure where we are."

Looking at the others, "Whenever you are ready let me know if you can understand me."

"Delm Alijandro Fernando yos'Permia." Shaking your hand.  "You look like you've been the Ice for a good long while.
Sweet Void!
How long have I been in the ice?"

Alijandro sounds reminiscent of Francis Underwood from House of Cards.

"Corporal Ernesto Ramirez present and accounted for. I'm not specifically trained in life support engineering, but let me have a look."

"Are you training for breaches and boarding actions?  I am curious what's on the other side of that door.  Systems are down, could be frozen vacum, but from the heat in here a radio active infero is just as likely."

"What is going on..... what happened?"

"What reality is this?"

I'll look at the pods to see if I can determine how long we've been under, it would be good to know if it was short or long.

[Oh good, twitchy techies]

Alijandro opens his trunk, rifle's through a few things.
"No, no, no. Ah perfect."

He tosses each of you a small orange fruit.  
"Some sugar and fuilds might help orient you.  I only have a few but they come from my orchards."

A spherical droid also come comes floating up out of the trunk.

Carefully eats.

Inspecting the Stasis Pods you can determine that they have been moved, perhaps several times. The two largest pod are clearly the oldest, the crude box the Khanate soldier climbed out of has no original paint left on it, the shell carbon scored and pitted with age and the visible insides are a hodge podge of replacement parts and jury rigged mechanisms clearly mating disparate technologies.  If it is an original Khanate Pod then it is clearly an antique older than recorded history, millennia old... which would seem impossible.  The second largest Pod, the Aslan made pod is in better shape, though clearly still an antique, but the man who stepped from it is dressed like out of an old vid-drama, a historical re-enactment from before the Imperium.

As to your own pod, it has clearly seen better days, but at least you can read the diagnostic screen.  Unfortunately in place of 'Elapsed Time' you merely have a string of 9's, an error code of some sort.  The final pod seems by comparison to be absurdly new, almost shiny.


Inspecting the hatch it does not appear to be sealed, but it is unpowered. It takes a moment to find the manual override, if you want to lever the door open the hard way.  With four people in a small room the air won't remain breathable long.

"Thanks for the fruit, Alijandro." During eating, closes eyes with happy memories. "I would one day enjoy touring your orchards, too. Let's live long enough to make that happen."

Looks about for any other not-obvious points of entrance or exit, including vents, and will ask around for some help. "So far this room is safe, but if we are securing this ship room by room to fix life support I don't want surprises."
[afterwards]

"Alright, weapons check. What do we got and how will we best work together?
[Shares some of Fimion's pertinent close combat and tactical knowledge]

"Got a few years of this under my belt myself, so I don't mind taking, or sharing, point. Does anyone have working comms, and a program to assist mapping? Techs, pilots, engineers? I'm good with field dressings, so I can take a med kit if we got some."

"I should be able to help with technical data... if I can connect to the data streams."