Alone in Paradise (The Chronicles of Anna Foster Book 2) Read online

  ALONE IN PARADISE

  by

  Patrick Stutzman

  Alone in Paradise

  ©2012 by Patrick Stutzman

  Cover Art © 2012 by Tomomi Ink

  All rights reserved.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permission of the author.

  Second edition: 2016.

  Dedication

  For Michelle, Alexandrya, and Rebecca.

  Acknowledgments

  Special Thanks to Mindy Wilson and Laurel Kriegler for their superior editing skills,

  Natasha Wicks for her continued inspiration,

  and the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday authors for their support.

  Chapter 1

  “Good morning, Anna.”

  No response.

  “Good morning, Anna.”

  The clear, almost-monotone voice spoke, entering little by little into the lithe woman’s consciousness. Different from the baritone voice she was used to hearing, this one was a delicate, high alto and articulated her words a little slower than the previous one.

  “Good morning, Anna.”

  Anna’s eyes snapped open and took in her immediate surroundings. Lying on a narrow cot within a cramped room while fully clothed in the same T-shirt and pants she had worn for the past fifteen days, she took a few seconds to recognize the place as the only sleeping quarters aboard the ship she had used to escape from the destruction of the space station. Her shirt, formerly bright white, was now slightly gray with several dark stains in various spots. The olive-colored cargo pants she wore no longer looked cleaned and pressed, as the press seam had softened and the corners of the pocket flaps now curled up and outward. Her bed sheets at the end of the spartan cot lay bunched up from another restless night.

  The bare walls, instead of giving Anna peace of mind, reminded her of the pictures of scantily-clad women that Ryan, the corporate enforcer who owned the ship before her, had used to practically wallpaper the minuscule cabin. During her first night after being marooned on the moon, she had ripped the pictures down, shredded them, and thrown them out of the room in a fit of anger and frustration. She had slept rather peacefully, but the feelings of rage returned when she awoke the next morning and found the bits of pornographic pictures scattered on the deck. Throwing the scraps into the power core, however, finally put the issue to rest.

  Back in the present, Anna yawned for several seconds. “What time is it?”

  “The time is zero six hundred hours, Earth – Greenwich Mean Time, Anna.”

  “That explains why I’m still tired.” She sat up and ran her fingers through her mussed hair. “Why do you insist on waking me up at this time every single day?”

  “You have not specified a different time to wake up, Anna.”

  Running her tongue along the front of her teeth and not liking the aftertaste from last night’s dinner of prepackaged spaghetti and crackers, she tapped the switch on the wall within easy reach from the cot. The cabin door slid open, and she stood and walked into the warm corridor. Gliding her hand along the cool surface of the wall while making her way to the next door aft, her initial surge of energy ebbed. She opened the door to the ship’s head and dragged herself through.

  Anna picked up the sonic toothbrush that had belonged to Ryan between her thumb and forefinger, and scowled. She cleaned her teeth and tongue after applying the littlest bit of toothpaste to its bristles. All of her toiletries had been left on the station when it exploded, leaving her no choice but to use the ones left behind on the craft. Most were designed for men: a sonic toothbrush, a mostly-depleted tube of toothpaste, a dull razor, a new bottle of spice-scented shampoo, a mostly empty bottle of after-shave, and a half-used bar of white soap. Despite her gratitude for the supplies available, she was disgusted with the idea of having to put the dead enforcer’s toothbrush in her own mouth, and had taken the time to clean and sterilize it five times with hot water.

  Halfway through her dental cleaning, the computer asked, “When will Ryan be returning?”

  Anna stopped brushing and withdrew the tool from her mouth. “He’s not.”

  “Why is that, Anna?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because, he’s dead. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “You have not informed me that Ryan is deceased. How did he die?”

  “I told you yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.”

  She shook her head and lifted the toothbrush to her mouth again. “The last thing I need right now is a computer with short-term memory loss.”

  Anna finished the last few strokes of the toothbrush and spat into the steel sink secured to the wall. She rinsed her mouth with a handful of water from the tap and washed the brush before returning it to its charge niche in the wall. As she dried her mouth with the one towel she’d found on the ship, she wrinkled her nose at the old, dirty smell it exuded and tossed it into the shower.

  “You have not told me how Ryan died, Anna.”

  The blonde rolled her eyes toward the ceiling while unstrapping her wristcomp. “What is the last thing you remember, computer?”

  A few seconds passed with only the faint hum of the ship's systems breaking the silence. “I have records dating back to three minutes and sixteen seconds ago, but my records are blank until fifteen days, nineteen hours, and fifty-three minutes ago.”

  Anna removed her boots and set them under the sink, while reflecting back on the events of the last two weeks.

  Once she’d determined that she was not seriously injured from the crash, she set about locating an immediate food supply and verifying the hull integrity of the ship, to work as a suitable shelter. Finding emergency rations proved to be easy, all things considered, and took very little time. But checking the status of the craft’s superstructure and hull plating took the better part of eight days, much longer than she’d anticipated.

  During the inspection, she discovered the cause for the engine failure. A sizable chunk of the station’s hull had slammed into the afterburners, crushing the outer manifolds and breaching the fuel tank in the process. After finishing the hull analysis, removing the debris took another two days and proved to be a mistake. With the debris gone, the remaining fuel leaked into the ground below. Cursing her luck, Anna retreated into the ship, resigned to the idea of being stranded on the moon for the rest of her life.

  Giving way to self pity and depression, she’d spent the last six days sulking in her cabin or on the bridge, wondering when she was going to die and if it would be painful. After she had gone several days without eating, and could not stand the hunger pangs any longer, she had decided that she would not let her situation get the best of her.

  Anna pulled her dingy socks and grimy shirt off and dropped them onto the floor at her feet, all the while mulling over the information the computer had just given her. Although she was stuck on this earth-like moon with only the ship’s computer for company, she had not talked with it much. Since the crash, the extent of the computer’s speech primarily consisted of asking...

  “When will Ryan be returning?”

  Growling from her throat, she unfastened her pants and let the garment drop to the floor, leaving her wearing a white bra and panties, both in need of laundering. She planted her hands on her hips and shifted her weight onto her left leg. Her frown deepened, betraying her frus
tration at the lack of original conversation. “Computer, do not talk to me, unless I ask you a question. Understand?”

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anna removed her bra and panties and dropped them to the floor on top of her pants. She grabbed the entire pile and stepped into the shower. She covered the drain with the towel, making it as flat as possible, and laid the rest of her clothes out around the shower. Once done, she reached in and turned the water on. Remembering that the water always started cold for the first few seconds, she waited until the water had warmed up, then stepped in. After she finished washing herself, she shut off the water and dropped to her knees to clean her garments in the warm, soapy water before it drained away, making sure to leave the towel for last. A couple of minutes later, she pulled the soaked towel from the drain and scrubbed it as best she could in the limited time she had. She wrung out the clothes, draped them over her shoulders, and proceeded to the ship’s airlock, taking extra care to not slip on the deck.

  A minute later, the top hatch of the ship opened and Anna’s clothes and towel flew through the opening, one article at a time, to land with a wet smack on the vessel’s white hull. Anna climbed out and stood naked next to the opening for a brief second before dancing in place, realizing too late that the hull was hot under the constant sunlight. After a few seconds she became accustomed to the heat, and was thankful that the white plating reflected most of the heat away.

  She looked up into the sky toward the distant sun, which looked smaller than Sol in the sky. She turned her gaze to look aftward, and looked past the long stretch of barren land created by the ship’s forced landing. Dominating most of the sky was the gas giant around which her moon orbited, its red and orange bands of gas tinged blue by the atmosphere. White puffs of clouds floating in the distance partly obstructed her view.

  Despite its natural majesty, Anna had grown discouraged over the past several days as she hadn’t heard any sounds other than her own voice, the voice of the computer, the hum of the ship’s systems, and the occasional gust of wind blowing past her home. Not a single sound of any animal life had reached her ears during her tenure on the moon.

  Anna breathed in the warm air and basked in the sunlight for a few more seconds before picking up her clothes and laying them flat across the top of the spacecraft. She had opened the covers to the solar panels built into the dorsal side of the ship, thus giving herself an unending supply of energy as long as the systems continued to operate, so she made sure to keep clear of the valuable dark panels.

  After she had set out her clothes, Anna looked down at her naked body and saw that her white skin appeared much too bright. The six years she had spent aboard the station had paled her. Taking advantage, she reclined on the hull to dry too.

  Finding an open space, she lay down on her back, stretched her arms behind her head, and rested her wet head on folded hands. She relaxed in the sunlight, taking in its warm rays. She smiled, then laughed, when she realized she couldn’t remember one time in her life when she had sunbathed under the open sky. Back on Earth six years ago, people had resorted to tanning in beds that bombarded their skin with artificial ultraviolet rays. Nobody, to her knowledge, did it the old fashioned way anymore.

  While she lounged on the top of the ship, Anna’s thoughts took her back to her teenage years growing up on an overpopulated Earth. The congestion of pedestrians on the streets of Seattle made movement inconvenient at best. Ground and air traffic was not much better, even with public transportation running twenty-four hours a day. Going to college in New York made Seattle’s urban sprawl look like a walk in the park. She recalled a conversation she’d had with her friends at NYU about how having half a dozen colony worlds hadn’t helped decrease the population density. Compared to Earth, Paradise was a perfect vacation destination – as long as it was only a temporary visit.

  Anna spent a long while lying under the sun. After her skin had dried on her front, she rolled over to let the warm sunlight dry her backside. Once dry, she returned to the upper hatch and reentered the ship, leaving the clothes to dry.

  She exited the airlock onto the bridge, still lit by the dim, ambient light pouring in through the forward window she had cleared during her first day outside the ship. “Computer, where is your computer core located?”

  “Unable to comply.”

  Anna stopped halfway to the pilot seat and stared at the inactive console. “Oh, come on. I’m trying to repair you, and you won’t even tell me where the problem is?”

  “You do not have proper clearance to access that portion of the ship.”

  “I’ve been on board for over two weeks.”

  “I have no record of you being aboard this ship for that period of time.”

  Anna’s voice tensed. “That’s because your memory circuits are in need of repair, and I’m trying to fix it. Now, please tell me where your core is.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  She stomped on the floor. “You’re more frustrating than that damn computer back on the station. At least he would answer my questions.”

  “When will Ryan be returning?”

  “Shut up! I forbid you to ask about that fuck Ryan anymore. Just tell me where the core is.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  Anna screamed and stormed off the bridge. Retrieving her tool belt from the foot locker under her cot and throwing it over her shoulder, she marched into the engine room. Once she had passed over the threshold, she stamped to the first panel on her left and flung it open.

  “What are you doing?” The voice came from the overhead speaker.

  Anna kept her vision focused on the components behind the panel. Her voice still held an edge. “I am trying to locate your computer core, so I can fix you.”

  “You are not authorized to access that system.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “If you do not stand away from the panel in ten seconds, I will have no choice but to send a distress signal to the nearest ship requesting assistance.”

  Anna snorted. “Go right ahead. No one’s going to hear you.”

  Several seconds passed in silence.

  “Very well, Anna. You leave me no choice but to send the distress signal.”

  “Good luck getting a response.” She rolled her eyes.

  A few more seconds passed while Anna moved from one panel to the next in her search for the computer core. Just as she thought she would accomplish her task in peace, the computer shattered the relative peace. “You are not authorized to access that system.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “What do you mean, ‘unable to comply’?”

  “As long as you continue to access ship systems for which you are not authorized to access, I must continually warn you.”

  Anna turned away from the open cabinet and directed her eyes upward. “You mean to tell me that I have to put up with your blathering even though you have already sent a request for help? What are you trying to do, annoy me to death?”

  “I am warning you that…”

  “That was a rhetorical question.”

  “In either case, you are not authorized to access that system.”

  Anna slammed the panel door shut. “Fine! But if you’ll just tell me where the computer core is, I will stop with the random searching and get to the root of the problem.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “Unable to comply.” She mocked the computer with a scowl and a whiny voice. “Can you say anything else besides ‘unable to comply’?”

  “I have a vocabulary consisting…”

  “Shut up! Rhetorical.”

  “Is there a question that I could answer?” The computer’s cheerful question fueled Anna’s rage.

  “Where is your computer core?”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “Fuck you and the ass
hole who made you.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  “I operate a large number of the ship’s onboard systems.”

  “Oh, shut up! Just shut up!”

  Anna fled from the engine room to her cabin. She cast her tool belt to the floor and threw herself onto the cot, where she cried into her pillow. After a few seconds she sat up and beat the wall with her pillow, screaming with each blow. Her fury vented after several strikes, she collapsed on top of the pillow and wailed.

  Her emotional outburst subsided as a thought crossed her mind. She sat up and contemplated it. Satisfied she could pull it off, she slapped the door switch and leaped into the hallway.

  Rushing across the bridge, Anna rounded the black, upholstered pilot’s chair and waved her hand over each of lens pedestals to activate the holographic displays. The orange control panels came to life and appeared in front of the pilot seat. After a few seconds, the set of panels on the right side flickered, but remained active.

  She tossed herself into the seat, sporting a broad smile. “Computer, can you show me the deck plans for the ship?”

  Barely a second later, the deck plans appeared before her. Leaning in to study the schematic, Anna found the computer core and jumped from the chair through the holograms. “Thank you.”

  She retrieved her tool belt from her bunk and rushed back to the bridge, stopping at an unmarked console on the port wall. Pulling a small prybar from her belt, she opened the panel with no effort. Replacing the prybar in her hand with her flashlight, she searched through the dense circuitry in the wall.

  “Anna, you are not authorized to access that system.”

  Anna gave the computer a rude gesture, not stopping her search. Finding nothing wrong, she pried open the panel below it and continued her investigation. At last she found that several boards had been jostled out of their sockets, making them inactive. Using extra care, she removed one of the boards and examined it. Finding nothing wrong, she checked the other boards and found no defect or damage. She returned the boards to their appropriate sockets, and leaned away from the opening.