Pilgrim One: Prominence (Project Pilgrim Book 1)

by Christopher R. Marrs

  Stunned, looking into her teary eyes, he explained, “I was just trying to comfort you…”

  “I don’t need comforting.”

  “What’s the matter then?”

  Her arms waving and wide eyes full of fury, “Take a look at the reports on the vid. The carnage that is occurring! That fatherless sayfi Woodam was going to LEAVE ME! I was a handful of rises from being in the middle of all of that! His death was too quick. I needed him to suffer. I do not feel avenged!”

  Narmer put up his hands, “I’m on your side. I can see what you mean, but he is dead you know. And with that, you got your Crescent. So, you did get the better end of the deal.”

  “Do you know what I went through for that handful of rises after he left me? The depths of my despair? I was cast aside, my spal was going to make it to Departure, and I was going to get to watch!”

  “Hmm, yes, I kind of do. I spent quite a few cycles with the same thoughts and feelings. I had a plan; it fell apart. It was there in my grasp, then, gone.”

  “Ok, but now it was being done TO ME!”

  “Woodam became the focus of your anger, I could only curse the fates,” he said, “and Woodam is gone. But the fates have smiled on me, and you too. We need to be thankful for that.”

  “Ugh, I know that you are right, but the range of highs and lows, the joy, the anger, the helplessness is pulling me in all directions.”

  Narmer nodded at the vid, “They have it worse. And like you said, let’s be helpful in the meantime. Pack it up and head to the carrier, we have things to do.”

  There wasn’t much to take. They had received green ship suits upon arriving. The put those on, as that was standard ware on the larger ships. They had also picked out new personal items from supply. They put it all in their equipment packs.

  All ready to go, Deides grabbed her pack and walked out ahead of Narmer. He stopped, took one more look around. Not noticing anything else that they needed, he stepped out of the room and closed it behind him. Then sped up to catch Deides. But, it was obvious that she was not in the talking mood.

  The berthing area was now vacant. Narmer got the feeling that they were bringing up the rear. The evacuation was apparently going well. He mentioned that to Deides.

  “Seems right,” she grumbled, “there actually wasn’t a lot to move from the rim, other than people. Jegit had mentioned to me that most of the equipment and supplies were usually kept in the central hub until needed. Balancing the rim for spin was a constant challenge.”

  Narmer brought up his instructions on his p-tab, and they picked up their pace on the rim, anti-spinward towards their designated ramp.

  “I’m noticing that the surge of people is gone, just a few of us stragglers left,” he mentioned, “kind of eerie how empty this place feels already.”

  They approached the ramp and climbed up it. Reversing the transition from the ramp to the sidewall/floor of the spoke. No showing off this time, Narmer and Deides made the transition without incident. Carrying their packs as the rimward spoke hatch began to close, they headed down the spoke to the central hub.

  As they approached the hub, gravity started to lose its grip on them. There were quite a few people trying to work their way through the recently opened hatch to the hub. Narmer and Deides now caught up to the back of the line of people. From there, they could see the handlers directing people and cargo. As they cleared the hatch into the hub, a handler came up them.

  Deides spoke up, “I’m here to help with the cargo onloading, I’m supposed to report to the department head first.”

  “Head to the large cargo hatch,” he said, pointing up the length of the hub, “you’ll find someone to help you there.”

  She looked around the spoke hatch for an idea on how to proceed.

  Noticing this the handler smiled and said, “Tie that strap on your pack to your foot. There are handholds sunk in the surface the entire length and breadth of the hub. Grab and go. If you fly free from the surface, just relax and wait until you hit the opposite side. You need to hurry; this spoke is about to rotate past the hatch and, so it is going to close.”

  Deides and Narmer helped each other get the packs tied to one another. Deides grabbed the nearest handhold and pulled herself forward. Then reaching for the next nearest, she made her way towards the cargo hatch. Narmer followed her. Fairly quickly, they were alternately grabbing holds with each hand and making good progress. Narmer could see that the cargo hatch was much larger than the hatch where their shuttle had docked. The people entering it looked like the smallest of emms crawling across the plants on Kepteyn.

  There was a constant stream of people and cargo making their way into the hatch. Narmer saw that there were actually two hatches. The far hatch was closed, the nearest was open.

  “I wondered how they did this. It’s an airlock. Any breach of this hatch would be catastrophic to the station. And now I see warning lights beginning to flash. Let’s hurry up and get in before they close up this side of the airlock.”

  Deides and Narmer passed through the hatch, and they could see the massive two-part door start sliding its halves together to close.

  They were looking around at the mass of people and cargo in the airlock, “You can feel the tension in here,” Deides whispered, “everyone is in a hurry, but now they are penned up waiting for the airlock to cycle.”

  Narmer nodded, “As the hatch closed, I felt it myself, coiled and ready to go. It is starting to feel real.”

  The far hatch of the airlock started to open. Before it completed opening, the mass of people leapt towards the hatch and began to squeeze through. By the time the hatch was completely open, only the largest cargo was left. Narmer and Deides had followed the herd and were through as quickly as possible.

  They entered the cavernous hold of the carrier. Narmer was amazed at the size of the space. Or the capacity, the actual free space was almost completely gone. The Heeta was a hexagonal cylinder similar to the Nunet’s hub, and almost as large. Neatly stacked elongated pyramid towers of cargo containers reached from each facet of the hull towards the central hub of the ship that ran from end to end. There were tower stacks across the entire space, with alleyways left for access. The sand-hued light panels were trying to hold back the gloom, but with so many blocked, shadows were being thrown and the alleyways were in prerise light. Looking around, Deides sighted another handler and grabbed her way over to her.

  “I’ve been assigned to help with logistics; I’m to report to the department head, can you direct me?”

  The handler, ‘standing’ with her feet tucked into the handholds, reached out and grabbed Deides by the hand and pulled her up and did the same for Narmer. “That would be me, Sub-Altern Frana Kan-Ald, call me Frana.” she said, “Come this way, I’ll get you oriented and put you to work. We can always use more hands.” Indicating Narmer, “What about him?” she asked.

  “I’m to report to comms. Which way is that?” Narmer replied.

  Frana pointed towards the far end of the hold, “Get over to that side and ask someone and they’ll direct you.”

  “Thanks,” he said as he grabbed Deides, quickly kissing her, “I’ll find you later. Working in comms, I’m sure I can figure out how.”

  Deides turned to leave, “See you then,” she said as she lowered herself back down to the surface. She followed Frana as she grabbed her way towards the nearest wall.

  Narmer watched them for a few nauks, then got down and started the trek to the far side of the hold.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Narmer was sitting at his controller station on the comms deck of the Heeta. There were multiple decks like concentric bands surrounding the central hub in the front half of the ship. The rear half of the ship was almost all cargo, no band of decks. Comms was situated middeck halfway between the outer hull and the central core. Most of the operation and command sections were at this level as well.

  At his station, the light was subdued, darkening the sandy hues of the comp
artment light panels. He was surrounded by vids and input devices. He had to smile at the irony. It made sense to name a carrier after one of the largest animals in the Wer. He had spent his time counting and tracking the smaller cousin, the hatmet. But his joy had been listening in on the conversations of the heeta. His hobby had been decoding their ‘language.’ And he had made good progress before his position was canceled. It just felt right to be here.

  After his introduction to his department head, he had been brought to this station to watch the instructional vids. That took almost a full chirp. And now it was a chirp before midrise. Narmer was waiting to be put to work. He was also looking forward to the midrise departure to Chon-su. And, of course, to his midrise meal.

  “That was pretty quick,” Sub-Altern Ilka Leu-Tag said as she hand grabbed her way over, “time to put you to work then.”

  “As you saw in the vids, you’ll be handling inter-departmental communications performing messaging classification. You are responsible for determining if the report or request is being sent to the correct department. We have to be able to manage the information flow between the departments. This will allow the divisional heads to be aware of all situations. We also need to be able to prevent requests from getting ‘dead-ended’ because the incorrect recipient can’t, or won’t, forward the communication to the correct department. And you will protect the department heads from being overloaded by low important chatter. Not all reports or requests are equal. The crew is going to be working at maximum capacity until we land and unload on Chon-su. For the next two rises, you will keep them sane.”

  “If there are no questions, I’ll turn on your stream, and you’ll be immersed. I’ll ramp up the stream as you get accustomed. You have one of the highest cognitive scores using the brain interface that we have in the Pilgrim Project. Put it to good use.”

  Narmer caught her attention as she turned, “And if I need help?”

  “Just ping my stream, but not too often, you’ll figure it out,” she offered as she left, “just make it work.”

  Narmer stared at the information displayed in various formats on the vids in front of him. Then his eyes lost focus as he started to see the information compartmentalized in his mind. Just like the practice scenarios in the training vids.

  He took a few nauks to decide when and where to integrate into the stream he was watching. He wanted to just stick a virtual toe into it, but as soon as he entered the stream, he was swept up completely. Information was coming so fast from the comms modules that he was overwhelmed. It wasn’t quite like the training; it had been much more sedate. Each report or request would circulate back around in the stream until one of the comm controllers would grab it, confirm or reroute its destination and then send it on its way. So, he decided to follow a request cycle around a couple of times and then he grabbed it.

  Once he had it, then it was pretty simple. He checked the request against the current operational categories and priorities. Seeing that it was within those accepted parameters, he tagged it and sent it on.

  “Pretty easy!” Narmer said to himself. And he proceeded to grab more at a faster rate. He started to feel comfortable.

  Narmer saw that Ilka was pinging him. He accepted her connection stream.

  “Narmer, I’m updating your operational categories and priorities. You’ve done surprisingly well. I’m moving you from departure tasks and putting you on the mission tasks. With the different people and cargo that we took on due to the timetable changes, we need more help. We don’t normally take this many people at one time, mainly cargo on these trips. But the majority of these people are crews, specialists, and engineers that need to be able to work and train en route. A much different mission parameter for us. Coordination is going to be key. You’ll need to make this as efficient as possible. We will undock in a quarter chirp, at midrise as scheduled. Make sure that you are strapped in for the transition to cruise mode, and the return of gravity as the ship departs from the station. I’ll transfer your stream after we undock. Take the time to reset your concentration.” Ilka then closed the connection.

  Narmer finally had a moment to himself. So, he searched through the streams for word on Deides and her activities. He found that she had been tasked with the Nunet evacuation cargo tagging and tracking. Since the Heeta had not been scheduled for this originally, they couldn’t just download the manifest and load mapping from the Kamlee, the sister ship carrier. Deides was working on that now and was locking it down in anticipation of their departure.

  He tagged her persona to receive a ping from him when she was free.

  He noticed that it was midrise. He pinged Ilka to request as to when he could get his meal eaten. Then the comm streams erupted.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Narmer was awestruck at the sheer quantity of streams and messages. Most were not being processed and just cycling waiting for a controller to take it. The nature of the messages changed dramatically from professional to frantic.

  There was a mini-starburst in his mind. The priority ping hit him full force. He accepted the ping, noticing that it was as Ilka.

  “Ilka! What in the name of the Ancients is happening?”

  “There has a been a catastrophic failure of the station. I’m changing your categories. You will be monitoring station comms, specifically damage response systems and teams. I don’t know what we can do, but prioritize any requests for aid.” Ilka instructed as she closed out.

  00+04-10`00`09

  Src: Nunet- Supply DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Decomp

  Priority: Muzan! Muzan! Muzan!

  00+04-10`00`12

  Src: Nunet- Galley DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Decomp

  Priority: Muzan! Muzan! Muzan!

  00+04-10`00`15

  Src: Nunet- Commons-006 DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Decomp

  Priority: Muzan! Muzan! Muzan!

  00+04-10`00`22

  Src: Nunet- Spoke Rim Hatch-002 DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Unscheduled Close

  Priority: 1

  00+04-10`00`30

  Src: Nunet- Spoke Hub Hatch-002 DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Unscheduled Close

  Priority: 1

  Narmer noticed that these were all automated requests from various Damage Response Systems throughout the station. His training had started with the DRS system messages. He was instructed that these were initiated by any of the various monitoring systems: fire, air quality, temperature, biohazard, etc.

  The worst of these was fire. The station wide level of damage that even a small fire could cause would be mission hampering in most cases. The next most serious was decomp, decompression. Narmer had thought this would be the worst thing that could happen. And indeed, decomp was very serious, but these events happened more often that one would think, he was instructed.

  There were systems and procedures to handle a decomp event, and there was almost always time for the Damage Response Teams to respond before any real damage was done or loss of life. This was because most decomp was caused by stray strikes from objects that were the size of one’s eye. Anything smaller, the station's armored skin could handle. Anything much bigger was detectable by the scanning systems, and the station could be steered out of the way. So, while dangerous, these types of strikes were more of a nuisance.

  What made these messages unique, was the classification. Muzan. The End. The name of the Destroyer. Catastrophic failure.

  Narmer started to see the various rim, spoke, and hub compartment DRS messages reporting hatch closures. The spoke hatch closures were standard procedure for any decomp alert. The large number of individual compartment closures, however, was not. As he learned from the instruction vids, these were last-ditch efforts to try to save as much of the station as possible.

  Narmer set up an automated routing for all of the
hatch closures and decomp messages. They would be routed to Heeta command.

  The next message caught his attention at the same time as he felt the ship lurch:

  00+04-10`02`05

  Src: Nunet- Spoke-002 DRS

  Dest Req: - Nunet- Cmd

  Desc: Decomp

  Priority: Muzan! Muzan! Muzan!

  His message category streams disappeared. Warning klaxons and lights signaled the undocking of Heeta from Nunet.

  Narmer opened a view on his left most vid to show the ship-wide info feed to find out what was happening. It showed the hub cargo docking ring up close. He saw the connectors spring back to release Heeta. Then he could perceive a slow relative motion away from the very large docking ring. It looked perfectly quiet.

  As Heeta began to accelerate from the hub at a faster rate, more of the hub came into view. There was still nothing to indicate any issue. The spokes started coming into view, their rotation relative to the hub was now visible. The lower spoke ended. Quickly, the ragged ends of the other spokes began to appear in the view.

  Heeta pulled away further, and Narmer could now see the rim. There were four roughly equal ‘T’ shaped pieces slowly expanding away from the hub. Other debris, also moving away from the hub, tricked the eye such that it appeared that the rim itself was stretching to fit its new radius.

  Another starburst in his mind, a priority ping from Ilka. He accepted the ping.

  “Narmer, I’m putting you on the response team for now. We will be meeting in a quarter-chirp in the command commons. I have sent the meeting info and location to your p-tab. Hurry, you’ll just make it.”