Dreams among Stars (15 page)

Help! Help! Hel

Drenched in sweat like at the previous dream I awoke and the image of the flattened mound appears before my inner eye.

Exactly now the same might be happening elsewhere.

Tired looks followed as I hurried to the main console and called up the ships blueprint.

Quickly I matched the route of the rift with the air locks positions. Hask had noticed my excitement and watched me working.

“
This is where we have to go” I pointed at an airlock in sector C 4 II from which I was sure to have received the last dreams.
 

Naturally Kara also had closely watched my every move and so she butted in “Hey Gerald told me about that place.” I am still unable to remember all of the eight names, but Gerald makes it easy for me to spot him with mumbling a tired “What?” as he slowly rose.

“
Gerald take a look, isn’t that the monsters there?” slowly he joins us “Hm. Oh yes, yes sure exactly there.” I am perplexed “Say how does it come you can read the plans so well?” At that question the faces of my new crew light up and not only Kara rummages in her pockets, but she is the first to hand me a piece of folded parchment.
 

It feels like made of some leather and I carefully unfold it.

To my surprise a schematic of the ship with different perspectives is drawn with clear lines on the leather.

At the lower right corner it is signed with
Bernhard Nwosu
and a shiver creeps along my back.
 

One of the young women, oh I remember that her name is Trish, clears her throat and then recites “This map is an exact replica of the last present of three, that the great Bernhard delivered upon us during his imprisonment. The other two may be found with the help of this map, as the positions of their hiding spots have been marked on it by us.” At this point I cannot hold back anymore “Who are these
us?
”
Embarrassment filled the room with loud silence, as the eight were exchanging shamefaced looks. Finally Kara breaks the silence “We should tell it!” Steve (I really must create uniforms with nametags) objects “With that you will put all the others in danger.”
 

I survey the group and call their names to memory.

Kara and Gerald are in the middle, on their right are Steve and Trish, left Simoné and Claudia and behind them Joey and Petra just had gotten up.

The eight excuse themselves to continue their discussion outside, right after agreeing that with some deliberation they could put together a harmless version of the story.

While preparing lunch I notice how much I already miss Agatha and her uncomplicated nature.

Bernhard and his stupid breadcrumbs, why couldn’t he just have submitted a decent report for the waking central?

My anger surprises me and I realize that in fact I was afraid of what I was about to learn.

Right before lunch was ready the group came back in and so it happened that we sat together for lunch, while they were telling me the defused version of their story.

When Bernhard was detained in prison the first Benefactor secured himself the help of mercenaries from the outer decks.

Back then of the only about a 5000 people strong crew only afew were fully trained technicians, supposedly it weren’t even a full hundred.

The mercenaries were supposed to capture all of the technicians and deliver them unto the Benefactor, which for a huge bounty was what took place.

Back then the name for the Flying Hustlers came to be, as the mercenaries loved it to chase down their victims while using hoverboards.

The times that came after were cruel, yet at that time the people from the outer hull did not foresee how far the Benefactors plans were reaching. Bernhard succeeded to talk with some mercenaries in secret and when he unveiled the plans he had learned about, it were those mercenaries that changed their name to the Open Eyes. They renounced the Benefactor and joined the resistance which had started forming in the middle decks.

It became more and more difficult for Bernhard to contact others and so it came that when he had a last chance he handed three items to one of the Flying Hustlers.

They refused to tell me more, but Kara stated that when they had learned enough from me they would help me to retrieve his other two gifts, if that was what I wanted.

We cleared the table and I pondered their tale as I was having uniforms cast up for everyone.

With much enthusiasm they slipped into their new outfits.

Could I trust them? Could I afford not to trust them?

They never had clearly said so, but the hints made it very obvious, the first Benefactor had secured his power by removing all of the technically adept personnel from the ship.

The heavy words mass murder weighed down on me and I had to think back to the recordings I had seen back at the waking area.

For now I would not render a verdict about the eights trustworthiness, potentially they could lead me to the additional clues from Bernhard Nwosu. His suggestions for improvements mainly had been about the water processing. If there was a connection between this and the fact that the seat of power of the Iron Warriors was located there?

I had wakened from my dream late afternoon, for the expedition to the “monster cave” we would need to calculate at least a day if not even two with all the equipment we needed and the repairs necessary on site.

The next day the grand meeting would take place, so that day was ruled out for starting the expedition. I assigned Hask with the task of informing Gurd as well as Maximus, about the importance to move out on that expedition as soon as possible, especially as todays expedition had been so fruitless.

When I pondered how to use the remaining day sensibly it suddenly hit me that I still had to send a report to the waking center, to not emulate Bernhards mistakes.

I still didn’t know enough, but I could at least draft up a warning.

So while the eight - I definitely needed a name for their group - kept busy with the different tools and the learning machines I wrote up a short report.

Incident report on 4839-08-30, Helen van Scharl:

With great effort I was able to leave the waking area alive.

Should this be my last report, so I urgently advise my successors to avoid direct confrontation, but rather search for the nearest way for fleeing from the area around the waking center.

The most powerful group denies the fact that we are aboard a space ship and has destroyed every contingency for higher education throughout the whole ship.

There are a number of groups resisting them, yet I advise on great caution when making a choice with whom to ally.

I was able to connect the waking central with the maintenance center in sector C 3 II and am working on clearing the maintenance tunnels and connecting the other three maintenance centrals.

Should it be possible, I will try and extend the maintenance tunnels to provide a secret entrance close to the waking area, so that fleeing might become a bit safer.

I have to assume that all of my 9 predecessors perished at the discharge from the waking area, should I learn of any evidence to the contrary I will include these in my next report.

From the different worts-case scenarios we were trained for none match. The society has relapsed far back and is at some point between the stone age and the medieval times.

I have great hope that tomorrow I can convince the the remaining people, or rather tribes from the outer decks to cooperate and also I found further traces of Bernhard Nwosu, who maybe left some clues as to the nature or origin of the catastrophic incident.

I am carefully optimistic and proceed with the assumption that won’t be the last report I turn in.

With a sigh whose origin was unclear to me I submit the report, when Marple who had been waiting for a fitting moment signals me.

“
Helen my darling, great news about the ships communication system. The maintenance drones were able to bring up a lot of the transmitters placed at the maintenance tunnel entrances, in fact I do have a good connection with Bee and a quite unstable connection with Rogspa.”
 

I thanked Marple fort the good news and quickly contacted Agatha and Rolf, both were well. Agatha did arrive at the tree house and was still waiting for her sister. I explain to her how she could use her glasses to contact Rolf and told about my newly acquired eight apprentices. Then I arrange a longer call with Rolf for later the evening and get back to work.

The ships communication system relied on the glasses, the communication means of the permanent crew were not as comfortable and direct by intent. In fact that had been one of the incentives with which the social engineers had hoped to interest people to complete the intensive training to become maintenance technicians, but apparently it had not been enough.

After mulling it over I created glasses for Kara, including Marple there were 5 glasses in circulation.

“
Oh a gift!” Kara yelled when I handed her the glasses and that was the name her glasses kept.
 

With a sincere face and lots of pathos I told Kara “I herewith appoint you as leader of the maintenance troop Phoenix. With these glasses you are able to access the ships systems and also to get in contact with me.” It was damned hard not to smirk as she accepted the glasses with a solemn expression on her face.

It could not be much more back than three months of my actual lifetime that I had wild farewell parties in Paris, everyone around me wore some sort of assistance system with, be it glasses, bracelets, whole suits or even implants.

And now I nearly felt like a demigod while handing out such basic technology.

I combined planning the repair mission starting in two days, with checking the current state of knowledge of the eight - oh wait I meant troop Phoenix.

Ultimately the planning resulted in the conclusion that the hardest work would need to be done by the maintenance robots.

Regarding the knowledge a huge amount of basic knowledge was missing, there were years of training ahead for Phoenix and so I had the troop exercise until late in the night how to manufacture learning machines, as well as combining defect ones to a working device. I explained where and how to get a hold of batteries and energy and beat in to grab every learning module they could get hold of and to copy and distribute them.

During the exercises I followed my intuition and explained to Kara that her final examination was to create data assistant glasses for the troop Phoenix.

It was late when Rolf contacted me through Rogspa and I welcomed the break. My students looked at me with big eyes, when I started talking to the air and when I joined Kara in she squealed excited.

I introduced Kara and Rolf to each other and unceremoniously told Rolf that he and his helpers would be know as maintenance troop Alpha from now on and that he was their leader, then I explained the final examination involving the glasses to him and impressed upon Kara and Rolf to cooperate at the retrieval, repair and distribution of the learning tablets.

With that I ended the conference and let Kara join her troop for the night, then I continued my talk with Rolf in private.

It was good hearing his voice, he was happy that I was so well and advised me not to trust the Flying Hustlers. It would take generations until the deep schism between the outer deck people could be healed.

Nonetheless I extracted the promise from him to definitely work together with Kara.

By now the group that was accompanying Rolf had swollen to 14 people and as the basic knowledge modules were pretty boring, they had started doing outside mission training.

During that one of Rolfs friends had died, yet that seemed not to faze him too much. I transmitted a construction plan for empty storage modules together with a plan for a copying device that would enable Rogspa to write to the modules as well as copy them, also I sent a copy of the safety training for outside missions.

After asking to send a copy of the basic school courses either to me or Kara as soon as possible I tiredly made my farewell.

In the meantime it was short after midnight and I quickly jumped into my bed to get some sleep, still the thoughts about tomorrow had me sleep restlessly. I often awoke and felt, still from my shallow dreams, the whiff of arrows barely missing my head.

Coming morning I rose early and at the fabber created brightly shining red and golden Phoenix badges and a ceremonial apparel for me.

It was kept in blue and brown hues as the technicians uniform, yet the blue was brighter and the brown was more golden, to that some silvery epaulettes and braids and I felt like someone from a circus.

Additionally to the festive uniform I buckled on my belt with the two pistols, as I was still unsure about the coming events.

At the collective breakfast Kara accepted the badges with a happy smile and the troop proudly put them on.

Hask looked abashed from the troop at me and it took no speculation to understand that he felt overlooked.

Practically he was no technician, not even an aspirant.

Without further ado I created a variation of the technicians uniform where I replaced the brown elements with a deep red and the blue with a pastel white.

As Hask was changing clothes I took a look outside, where more and mor colorful tents were being pitched up. Quite a number even on small platforms or in balloons hanging between the trees.

On a whim I had the fabber also create a sheriffs badge like I remembered them from the old western movies.

I handed Hask the badge and said “Congratulations, you are the first and only of the ships security force!” That resulted in Hask not leaving my side throughout the whole day.

Satisfied I surveyed my colorful crew, indeed the regular staff from back at the start of the mission would not have looked too different.

That was when stage fright got a hold of me, it was quite likely that the overall success of our mission depended on this days events .