Awake
Fallout: Mars [a fan fiction] - Chapter 1
Synopsis: Somewhere between Earth and Mars, the crew of the colony ship Settler encounters a crisis that awakens them from their cryosleep pods. Jet Mason, the colony’s head engineer finds himself alone in a dark cryo-bay and sets out to find the rest of the crew. The terror begins when he discovers the reason the ship has been disabled and the crew is not what they used to be.
It was dark. Too dark. Jet blinked his eyes hard to make sure they worked. He was light-headed and nothing made sense for a moment. His eyes began to focus. The room was mostly dark with the exception of the small amount of light coming from the cryosleep pods.
He shook his head to remove the fog from his mind. It took a moment, but he started to remember where he was. Cryo-Bay 01. The pods in this bay were reserved for the officers and the colony ship VIPs.
Jet stretched out his hand in front of him and realized his pod door was open. He floated clumsily out of his pod and tried to make sense of the situation.
“ARES?” Jet called out. “Are you there?”
No response came from ARES, the ship’s resident information officer bot. ARES was a modified Mr. Handy Robot programmed specifically for this mission to Mars. His core programming objective was to assist the officers and crew out of cryosleep and to help them transition from the spaceship to the newly constructed biodome on the red planet’s surface.
“Are we here already?” he mumbled to himself as he felt around for the other cryopods.
They were open as well but there was no sign of the others. He knew something was very wrong.
The cryo-bay was quiet except for the occasional creak and groan of the large cargo ship. There were five hundred souls aboard this colony ship.
“Anna? Leo?” Jet called. “Ace? Are you guys there?”
Jet knew the life support systems were still functioning. He would have been dead without them. The cryosleep pods were all functioning as well, but the artificial gravity generator was not online. The occasional piece of debris floated by.
“What in the heck is going on?” he pulled himself toward the console. There was a bank of computers there but they were lifeless. He pounded on the power switches but nothing happened.
“Blast!” Jet hissed as he turned towards the row of lockers on the other side of the bay. “Maybe my Pip is still working.”
The Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV that each officer had was state of the art. They had just been released to the public a few months before the Mars mission launched. Each unit was powered by a fission battery and had an outer case that could stand up to just about anything, even the cold, harsh conditions of space.
After putting on his lightweight, but sturdy and protective space suit, he strapped on his Pip-Boy and powered it on. The screen flickered to life. He clicked over to the data screen and gasped when he saw the date.
If that date was accurate, their 4-month mission to Mars had now been in space for almost 2 years. He had been in cryosleep for much longer than the mission called for. They should have been at the Mars landing site, unloaded, and living comfortably in the new biodome.
But they weren’t. They were here in the dark. No computers. No lights. No people. No robots. He had no idea what was going on, but he was determined to find out.
Hello, there. I’m Russ, also known as RKslade. I love sci-fi and fantasy. I love music and books. I’m writing some of my fan fiction and fantasy fiction here on substack. Please consider subscribing if you want to support an aspiring author!
This is my fun little homage to the Fallout universe. It is a story set around the time of the Great War in 2077, right before and right after. My goal is to try and keep the lore in tact and keep everything as canon as possible, but it's just a fan fiction, so please be kind if and when something might not line up with official timeline stuff! Please have fun and come along on the journey with me!