Falling Up
Posted on 21 Jan 2021 @ 1:12pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*)
Edited on on 21 Jan 2021 @ 1:28pm
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: OC, J-tubes/ central access shaft
Timeline: MD07 0910~
1453 words - 2.9 OF Standard Post Measure
"Mez0001 L0059, Mez0001 L0058, Mez0001 L0057..."
Calliope had to watch the numbers on the walls of the tubes. She'd only been first officer for less than a week and hadn't memorized escape routes from the command center. But as design would have it, the principles of the numbering systems between stations and ships spanning decades was fairly similar in principle. Even if it weren't she wouldn't have let on that she had no idea where the hell she was going. There were junior officers and non-comms trailing her ass and spooking someone while second guessing the way was not going to help matters.
She came to a six way intersection and fogged her helmet momentarily with an exasperated exhale. But her orientation sense told her anything going downward or rightward was going to let out into the main shaft in the end, so she picked rightward and went on counting the segment numbering.
The friction of her own hands and knees was a rhythmic shuffle, counter played by the sound of her own breathing and a soft hum of the air filter in the helmet. These suits had excellent reinforcement at the wear points, anyway, so that wasn't worrisome. She looked back over her shoulder to see the diminishing train of other helmeted suits behind her, none of them identifiable to her. Another juncture was coming up and this one, she decided, they would take downward. She climbed out on the ladder and paused, disengaging her magnetics when she had a firm grasp. There was no noticeable gravity change. Corvus hadn't shut it down yet. Calliope briefly considered a fireman's slide down the ladder. even if the gravity disengaged she could still recover. Had she been alone, she would have gone for it, but with her train, there was no point in hurrying.
"Are you alright Commander?"
"Fine, Mr Wiser." He looked even younger through the helmet glass. Like a teen action figure in it's bubble plastic. "Stay with me."
Calliope began the rungs downward. They would need to go about ten decks. The ladders weren't a thousand decks down, at least. they had a landing every couple of decks so no one would be tumbling to a seemingly bottomless pit. As she went, Calliope felt her stomach lurch. It was a familiar kind of lurch. The gravity was down. She looked above and three officers away, there were some legs floating in the air as one of the climbers struggled to turn their mag boots on.
Calliope shook her head. Hopefully that was just the lowest common denominator showing itself. She had to assume the worst, however, because if that were the standard for this lot, crossing the shaft was going to be like trying to get a buncha helium party balloons to land where you wanted.
Ahead there was a standing walk, a maintenance access hall where Calliope came to her feet and tracked until she found what she was looking for. Her head lamp illuminated a vault-like access hatch covered in warning in multiple common federation languages. Warning, no unauthorized access. Calliope entered her authorization override and then hand pumped a lever. The door popped a seal like a new jar of pickles moving outward and sliding up one step at a time with each pump of the lever, revealing nothing but a darkened maw. Calliope lit an emergency flare and gently pushed it out into a slow end to end tumble where it could lend a flicker of illumination, a match in a cavern where hundreds of massive bundles of cables ran up and down the walls between dozens of turbolift housings and thousands of plasma relays.
She looked back and saw the bob of Wiser's adams apple as he gulped.
"We need to go about 200 decks down, and then from there, across. It'll be an easy float. Stay spaced out from one another and within arm's reach of the scaffolding." Calliope turned off her mag boots and held the rail. It took barely any effort to clear it like a slow motion hurdle and she flipped herself head over heels so she would feel she was flying up instead of falling down. With a push from her fingertips she was off.
Hands at her sides, Calliope kept her headlamp pointed at the wall, her eyes tracking the upside down numbers. The deck reckoning was going up as she "rose" now. The way buildings worked rather than space constructions. Something else caught her eye though. And she startled a little before she focused on the thing. It was *inside* her helmet. Her first instinct was from the gut—She thought it was one of the spiders she had read a report about caught inside her suit with her!— but as her vision focused she recognized it, to her great relief, as her own necklace. She hadn't secured it well enough when they had suited up and it was floating around her face now. Lance had given it to her way back in Academy. It was unlike any of the many finely crafted jewels, haute couture statements, and family heirlooms he'd lavished on her.Lance had fashioned it himself from some wire in the lab that he'd looped around itself and threaded a necklace chain through.
She recalled the day he'd given it to her. He'd graduated some time before and they'd kept visiting as his assignments were in the Sol System yet. But she was going to be graduating and her assignment was to take her out on survey. She was worried the beginning of her career might be an end to things with Lance. Would what they had last? She remembered back to Lancelot's explanation of the simple wire pendant....
"This is pure, refined Rhodium. Once quite a rare metal here on Earth, now a lot more common since we have hundreds of planets and moons with which to refine it. Note the silvery detailing, and high reflectiveness. Rhodium has an extraordinarily high melting point and a rather amazing ability to withstand corrosion. See here I looped it into two intertwined concentric circles - I suppose you might say this was an allegory for a strong relationship; one substance, heavily resistant to being corroded. Unwilling to fall apart even under intense strain."
He'd put it in the palm of her hand. And ever since, Calliope had been wearing it, tucked under her uniform every day
.....Presently she moved to touch it but her gloved hand stopped at the helmet glass. There was nothing for it. The symbol remained in her vision as she counted the decks.
Approaching the target level, she reached out for a railing and caught herself, then looked up to make sure Wiser and Kuvat made the stop along the railing beside her. There was a line of officers pacing along behind them and she needed to push off before there were any collisions. She did some quick guessing about what sector of the station would be approximately where the Marines had broken out camp and picked a trajectory. Close would be good enough once they were back on gravitized deck plating and could make the rest of the way in standing sized corridors. She launched off as if she were in a pool, kicking off from the wall and reached forward in a flying pose. For a long minute there was no point of reference to be seen, nothing above, nothing below, nothing before. Just darkness around, and the glinting of her helmet's lighting on the rhodium pendant suspended in her face.
It was in that void moment when Calliope sensed her hands and feet tingle like pins and needles. She tried to flex her hands, but discovered her fingers were numb. The scaffolding on the opposite wall was approaching now, growing in the light of her head lamp, and she tried to grasp it but couldn't get a firm hold. She started to spin and struck a support pole which she reflexively hooked by her elbow.
"Commander!" Kuvat called out as he and Wiser made it to the scaffold.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Calliope reassured him, trying to get her own heart rate under control. "These gloves are just bulky." She looked out across the gap the way she had come and watched the oncoming trail of lighted EVA suits. Counting them, Calliope was content that she hadn't lost anyone. But she still didn't see Corvus and her buddy-up. Hopefully they weren't far behind.
Calliope called back as she shimmied along the scaffolding. "Kuvat, Wiser, hop the rail and start helping them over. We'll regroup. We have a few more J-tubes and a bit of a run ahead of us yet."
