Cold Start Protocol
The cold-start protocol was laminated on the wall of every rack bay in four languages, and Anneli had not needed to read it since her second shift, but she read it anyway because the protocol existed for this exact kind of morning. Forty minutes of walking. Two litres of water, sipped, never gulped. Twenty minutes on the stationary ergometer in the auxiliary room, not because you needed the cardio but because the feedback from your own tendons told your inner ear where it was. No stimulants for six hours. No arguments for twelve. The last one was a joke among the crew, because by the time you had been awake for twelve hours on a cold start you had usually had three arguments, two of them with the ship.
She kept to it as well as she could. She drank her water in the small alcove outside the bay, and she walked the long corridor of deck seven from the aft lock to the forward lock and back again, three times, with the lights in their sleeping setting, a gentle wash of amber that did not strain a just-opened eye. The corridor was empty. The corridor was always empty on a sleeping deck, but it was emptier than usual, because of the thing that Reval had said in her ear, which Reval had not repeated.
She came up through the stair trunk to deck four with her hair still wet and her hands still a little unreliable. The galley lights on deck four were on full day-cycle, which meant