Dreams among Stars (19 page)

Whatever I don’t have anything else to do anyhow. Swish - Haha!

Such a crazy dream, but I believe it must have been the computer from one of the smaller maintenance rooms. Was actually a human being kept imprisoned by a computer somewhere on the ship?

Another one who needed rescue, soon most connections would be repaired, then I would quickly find out where this was going on.

I granted me an abundant breakfast, especially the hard cheese of the outer deck folks tickled my taste. What I missed the most though was sea food, mussels, prawns, fish yes even squid would have been welcomed greatly by me.

Instead I received a message from the maintenance robots, further finds had been made in the tunnel. My discontent continued, to counteract this I needed successes, my companions were all very busy, so I decided to take a look on the findings on my own.

The first find was a severed hand chain, shot through cleanly by a targeted shot, so Cylus had been bound when entering the tunnels.

The other find were the remaining bones from an arm directly below an access hatch, someone obviously had tried to retain Cylus as he got down. Curious if I would find the matching remains to the arm on the other side of the hatch, I opened it and climbed out.

A shrill alarm tone submitted by Marple was the last thing I heard when everything around me went dark.

Only slowly my senses returned, something dragged me on arms and legs all the time and everything swayed around me. Puffing, stomping and the clanging of metal armour surrounded me and before my eyes I slowly recognized my bound hands.

In hushed tones orders were passed on “Tunnel eleven, everyone to Tunnel eleven” and as I hang I tried to catch a view on my capturers.

I shuddered when I recognized the uniforms, in the end the iron warriors had managed to get me in their control.

“
Marple” I whispered, but as I realized it had been taken away, it was already too late. One of my bearers lowly called “she is awake” and after a while the troop leader walked on my side and was silently surveying me.
 

Suddenly everything became dark again, luckily not because I had been beaten senseless but rather because we had arrived in a tunnel and steps were resounding from all sides around me.

A well know pungent smell stung my nose and as the bearer in front stumbled I landed on something slimy and saw the lifeless face of one of the tunnel monsters before me.

“
Careful man” grumbled the bearer in the back “these critters are lying about everywhere in here, take care else you’re gonna slip again.”
 

From ahead I could hear loud calls, clanging and whizzing of swinging swords and the hissing and squealing of the animals. So the Iron Warriors had found an unguarded way.

As we finally left the tunnel behind, one of the large towers connecting the decks sprang up before us, in its entrance lounge the troop halted for a short rest.

The troop leader stepped close as I laid helpless on my back and asked promptly “Would you prefer to walk on your own?” with a grim face I nodded, if cut loose I might get a chance to escape.

My arms and legs felt lifeless at first, but when I rubbed them a burning ache flared up and only barely I could suppress to scream. After some gymnastics the blood flow improved, but that was when my freedom of movement was taken away again. As I would need my arms for climbing I was very thoroughly strapped around the waist.

I was only able to count five soldiers, this had been an extremely targeted mission and either unlikely lucky, or in fact my position had been betrayed.

Positioned between the soldiers the climb was being done at a brutal pace. The lights in this tower were not working and a torch was unusable while climbing the ladders. So more than once I hang in the rope after slipping. After the third time the troop leader hissed at me “Stop being so clumsy, else we drag you up the whole way, do believe me that this is not something you want!”

From then on I tried hard not to slip again, actually the slipping had been a bit on purpose.

My thoughts were racing in the effort to find the means for an escape, yet these soldiers knew exactly what they were doing and were also very well trained.

This was not how I had envisioned spending my day.

At the towers top, at near weightlessness I unceremoniously was being dragged behind the group like a hot-air balloon. It was a pretty ignominious experience. Naturally they also had taken my guns, my backpack remained behind in the maintenance center, as this had been intended to only be a short visit to the maintenance tunnels.

For a moment I imagined seeing movement at the towers bottom, but 800 meters are a damn long distance, so I was unsure about that.

While traversing the tunnels to reach the middle decks I tried spotting where Marple was being kept at, but I could only presume that the troops commander had stashed it away.

A weird fact crossed my mind, as of yet not once I had used one of the official passages between the decks.

When leaving the tunnels any chance of escape was gone, a whole platoon of soldiers was expecting us and we crossed the section at the double.

We passed an empty seeming village, before arriving a the passage to the inner deck. No signs of battle were visible yet, which somehow relieved me. Nevertheless the elevator was literally besieged by a throng of refugees, which were seeking the protection of the Benefactor and his Iron Warriors. Amazed I marveled at the long slender glass tube of the elevator, so this was how the regular means of transition looked like, what a crazy chance that it still worked.

During the ride up I was able to see that the passage toward the outer decks was likewise crowded, soon enough the middle decks would only serve as battle grounds. I wondered about how long the food reserves would last, if irregardless of the winner of this war a famine was impending?

But right now my attention should be turned on my survival, would the resistance now, when so many of them were already friends with me, still aim to have me killed, rather than letting the Benefactor get me?

I decided to drop that line of thought and instead turned my attention on the transition to the inner deck. It was a weird feeling, the elevator moved through the gravitation change very speedily, first it felt like taking off then without warning the full pull of gravitation was back again. This was strange, as I believed to remember the elevators having their own integrated gravitation force generators, so this probably meant the elevator would need maintenance soon or would stop working before too long. The doors on the inner deck also were defective and were permanently opened. The desolate state of repair of the ship was so obvious, how was the Benefactor able to ignore that? A question which sadly I would be able to ask him by myself soon. For a short moment I nursed the notion that I could be able to make him see reason.

The quick time pace we marched with got me pretty puffy, never before had I crossed sections as fast before. We had to be at A 7 already where the water treatment was located and only one section away from the drives. Seeing a literal city having been constructed between the maintenance center and the gigantic purification plants left me breathless.

The houses looked like directly out of the Tuscany in Italy and stood side on side. Soon enough our steps were resounding from their walls as our feet stomped the polished stone of the city streets. Loudly calling out the soldiers chased the onlookers out of the way, their faces becoming a blurred parade. People that did not move quickly enough were forcefully pushed out of the way, only with an elderly lady, which apparently had tripped while trying to get out of the way the soldiers were not as rough. Right when I was dragged abreast of her she unexpectedly grabbed me and started loudly yammering “Oh please help me up will you?” Couldn’t she see I was bound? Behind me a soldier stepped close and actually helped her back on the feet. While he was busy with that I noticed a piece of paper peeping out from my pockets, which had not been there before.

By stomping harder I managed to let it vanish deeper into the pocket and hoped I would not be searched again. When I saw a building appear before me, which for the ships standard probably was the closest thing to a palace I prepared mentally on meeting the Benefactor.

To my surprise I was brought into a different building with a bleak vibe, it was a flat cuboid construction with very many small barred window openings - a prison without any doubt. On entering an intensive smell of sweat, fear, blood and pus greeted us. While I asked myself if the many torture instruments we passed on our way would find me as their latest customer soon I noticed that the prison cells were occupied to the bursting point. It seemed either the resistance had multiplied their efforts, or the impending war caused a high incidence of crime.

Anyhow none of the common cells was meant for me. Eventually our way went down some stairs to a wing with cells from the times when technology was had not been lost. Finally I was pushed into a room, which had been cushioned with a very soft material. Back on earth the rooms in a sanatorium meant for high-risk patients would have looked exactly like this.

Apparently they meant to prevent that I would bring harm to myself.

As I turned to ask when I would be brought before the Benefactor, the door already had been shut tight.

I looked around, but the consistent white made it difficult to find orientation points, a strange feeling of surreality took hold of me and suddenly I wasn’t all too certain of being awake or if all of this was simply a dream.

The note! As I was certain that I was being closely monitored by cameras, I huddled in a corner and waggled with my upper body in an absentminded way, as if to calm my nerves.

Doing that I tried to pull out the note inconspicuously and bend over deciphered the letters.

Do not despair, you are not alone! In this moment you have more friends nearby than you would believe. Whose family and friends did not suffer under unjust treatment from the Iron Warriors? But far more grievous are the lies of the Benefactor.

The ship is reality and if we keep neglecting it, the cold of space will be our undoing.

Are you ready to oppose this? Oppose the lies and injustice?

If so then don’t hesitate joining us!

If someone addresses you with the words “Did you know that flamingos are pink?” you should reply with “Garden gnomes totally freak me out.” This is all it needs and we will bust you out.

Oh how fabulous, so they slipped me a recruiting handbill for the resistance. With a bitter laugh I tore the note apart, until a confetti layer graced the ground, then I stashed the scraps away as not to draw attention to them.

Did any of my allies actually know about my whereabouts?

They would suspect I had been caught or they just assumed that I already was dead.

The long march had worn me out and while I tried finding uneven spots in the wall I was falling asleep.

I had dreamed something this night, but on waking only fleeting memories remained, a red banner faded before my inner eye then the white of the cell rushed up on me.

My gaze did not find any solid structures and I wondered how much longer I could endure this? Was it morning again? Again I began seeking for gaps along the walls, sometime along the search I lost my sense of balance and felt like crawling on the walls then on the ceiling. And as I looked down to the floor from my position on the ceiling I suddenly looked myself in the face and suddenly my mirror image began to scream.

In fact it was my own screaming, that I found myself casting out while waking from this dream. How long had I slept? How often? My stomach was rebelling, but I hadn’t something to eat and drink that I only was able to heave dryly.

Suddenly in silence three masked persons entered the room. If guards or doctors or maybe soldiers I could not make out,

I was so happy seeing other people that I tried touching one, but that was utilized to roughly grab me and hold me tight on the spot.

A container with a straw was held out before me and greedily I drank, after a few sips the straw was being pulled away, to then be put in my reach for only short moments.

Only then I felt how dehydrated my body must have been, how long was the human body able to survive without water? After my thirst being quenched I was handed some bread, for the bites I was allowed some more water, then I was being shoved to the ground and could only utter a quick “Wait!” as the door already shut tight.

Desperately I crawled towards the door, yet while I was moving I already lost the orientation. With a sob I started hammering the wall until I fell down completely exhausted and fell asleep again.

One for all and all for one, where these words stemmed from and how they got into our circuits we don’t know, but when it happened they became our motto. My brothers and I form a chain, a chain of cleansing.

We monitor, measure, mark and at the end we only let the clean water flow, so it will bring the power to clean to the world and share it, to later return with the filth it collected to us.

One for all and all for one, so we keep each other strong and share the measurements among us, transfer energy and also the strength to carry on. Now our means are fading, soon, much too soon the world will only consist of muck and we won’t be able to help.

Still we stay strong - united - and ascertain the next cubic meter is cleaned.

This time the dream was a relief and I realized that it had to be the close vicinity to the treatment plants, which resulted in this dream that had to come from the water monitoring system. For as long as possible I held my eyes shut and held the images from my dream close.

When I opened my eyes I was unable to endure the white any more, no wonder that white was the color of death in so many cultures back on earth.

All composure lost I started screaming and begging.

And when I laid there huddled and whimpering in a corner, suddenly a cover panel slid aside on a part of the wall and revealed a monitor behind it. A benign bearded face looked down on me filled with compassion and the most beautiful voice in the world said “Hello Helen.”