Galactic Pilgrimage, Part 2 of 3 - Ambulo per Nigrum
27 Nov 2018Monolith Preacher
A Capital class ship floated somewhere between The Ascendance and The Bleak Lands. Bereft of any Imperial or Federal construction, this ship was over a thousand years old. It had been upgraded haphazardly, and only when necessary. Zheng would never have imagined such a mammoth hunk of junk could ever be created. It was designated “The Antenna”, and it was receiving a transmission from The Red Spider Nebula on a grainy holo-feed.“T̘͎̟̼̬͘h̶̝̭̫͚̦̯̖̘͔͔̲̰̹͇͇̺̼́͘ͅí̢̛̺̟̩̹̻̮̳̬͔̞̲͉̟̯́̕ͅs̢͏̷̤̰̻̹̗̗̞̭̬̹̣͚ ̢͚̺͕̘̩̟l̶͈͍̞̬̜̟͎͚̱̺̘͇̟͙̯̗͠i̴̡͈͎̖̣̗̫͖̰̩̱̤̝͜͠ͅṋ̡̞͇̗͖̻͓͍̭̖̝̤̺̝͡ͅe̸̸̘̮̯̗͉̘̝̺͇̜̬̳͕͚͜ͅ ̵̷̲̼̮̟͍̙͎̞̲̩̠̕͢ should be secure. I'm here as our pact signified I s͏͉͔͙͓̬̥͓͕̗͚͉͓̗̙̭͡ͅh̶̡̜̝̬̟̖̣̝͕̜͕̼̫͍͓͘͞o̷͉̟̤̖̥̝͕͇̯͚̻̮͍̻̜͎̟͈͢͠u҉̪͖̫͍̜͖͔̣̗͡͠͠l͘͘͟҉̼͇͍̼̣̤͉̟̤̮̰̟͕̮̩d̷̤̘͇̱̘̮̞̜̖̤͈́ ̛̫̟͇̠̳̜̬̦̩̘͠ͅc̸̶̵̱͚̖͚̮͈̘̝̰͎͈͈͉̼̫ͅò̶̳̖̳̮͈̻̪͔̹͠m̛̥̖̼̜̩̙͜ͅm͉̺̤͎̰̥̳̙̥̬̫̥̀́́u҉̲͕͔̠͔̞̪̱̬͟n̢̖͕͎̖̭̦̥̮̝̦̞̺̖̻͘̕͜i̴̢̯̜̘͕̬͉̯̠̗̻̳̺̗̣̹̟̕͝͞c̨̢̣͍̰̬̜̰̤̮̲̕͝a̡͠҉̼̻̞̣͉̗̞̠̻̞̼ț̵̛̱̮͙̟͕̤̗̜̹͈͎̟̘͕̗͚̦e̵̵̕҉̘̝̩̳͚̹̲͈̣̭͉̞ͅ with The Master if we ever saw evidence that the xenos had returned. I await further instruction.””
A lone figure sat just beyond the ambient light of the projection and pondered what to do with this message. On the one hand, this one had strayed back and forth from their own concerns and the faith quite often. On the other hand, being part of the world but not of it only worked to a certain point. Decisions can often be made by providence as much as by indecision, but external factors may affect either without proper protocol. One could give a breadcrumb with one hand and take away with the other. One could also find such generosity lead to slit wrists. There is always more time than it seems, regardless as to outside pressures.
As the ship floated aimlessly onwards, the figure noted that it had finally moved between the designation of system boundaries. He checked his timepiece. Two hundred and fifty years, twenty eight days, six hours, forty two minutes and twelve seconds.
“Well, I guess my calculations were off by a minute or two” he rasped, and a dry chuckle emanated from behind his visor.
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Jaquel looked out across the galactic plane. He'd plotted a route towards the Eye of Horror, but it was going to take a while to get there. Every explorer has things they like to put in their pocket when exploring, so to speak. Rainrix had a thing for purple planets, but he especially liked white stars which glowed purple. Everyone liked a good ELW, but Black Holes held a special place in Preach's heart. Whilst others scanned them and flew away with the thought of credits swimming in their eyes, his was more of a compulsion to kiss the event horizon itself and dice with death in the lack of light.
“Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est” Preach intoned.
“Oh aye, so what is it then, Guv?” Zero responded with some amount of sardonicism.
“Vitam impendere vero, of course!” Preach replied with some jest.
The Ravager disappeared in a haze of purple as it jumped towards its first point outside of the Red Spider and towards places unseen by its inhabitants.
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Now, Preacher was well accustomed to space madness, and was of the opinion that the way out is through. This isn't a popular opinion amongst many spacers, but it had worked for him in the past, and so he had gotten Scarlet to write in a few protocols to the AI in order to keep him from spacing all his cargo on a whim if he started to believe that brain worms were eating the produce. Many veteran explorers balk at the idea of taking cargo on a voyage, claiming it is nothing but dead weight, but Monolith doctrine stated that one must always have offerings to hand and Jaquel liked to think that if he did find an unexpected station or life form out there he'd have things to smuggle when he bumped into them. Ergo, he decided to keep it simple and bring along some basics. He stuck a tonne each of slaves, Harma Rum, Kamorin Historic Weapons, Crom Silver Fesh, and Hutton Mugs in his hold. Onionhead strains were a dime a dozen nowadays, and he thought that Geawen Dance Dust was something best kept to the clubs than the endless expanse of space.
The hard part was making sure the cargo all made it there and back again. He had to dip in to his supply every once in a while, but in all honesty Preach didn't know how long he was going to be gone. A tonne sounds like a lot to get through, but but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. So he made himself a rule: one hundred jumps per day, and then he could play. Any extra exploring he did would come off his playtime, but would serve as a healthier addiction than what was in the lock-up. It would also serve to make him money rather than lose it, but that wasn't the real concern. Getting his name on an interesting system had been something he'd been wanting to do ever since he first heard of the Galactic Mapping Initiative, and he wanted to make sure he was paying attention instead of doing the “scan, honk, jump” routine that the tourists do when routing to a destination.
As he jumped through the first ten systems on his route and saw nothing but barren rocks and standard stars, he got himself comfy and decided to let the AIs argue with Zero about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything for the rest of the day as he swigged some Fujin Tea he had lying about he'd requisitioned from his Beluga for the trip.
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The Antennae drifted slowly through an asteroid belt, the rocks chipping pieces off its hull as its shieldless mass was tapped back and forth by the collisions. The limpets were mining enough metal to mend the cracks as they appeared, and enough materials were recycled in the process to make new limpets. In all the process was far easier than trying to source a shield generator which would be able to interface with such old technology. Humans always had a predilection to putting the bridge in one of the most vulnerable places on a ship behind a thin layer of plexiglass despite advances in sensor technology making the need to see things directly with your own eyes irrelevant. Luckily after 300 years of millimetre-long fractures becoming foot-wide holes after attempting to jump into supercruise, the decision was made to move the bridge closer to the centre of the ship. This took another 200 years to achieve, but time moves pretty slow out in the black, so no-one really made a fuss about the whole endeavour. That job being done, the need for a shield generator became increasingly moot as plexiglass panels were slowly replaced by metal and the inhabitants of the ship got used to seeing a screen displaying what was behind it. Thus, the limpets became one of the most important parts of the ship.
A spreadsheet displayed a dizzying array of calculations, distances and minerals criss-crossing over the walls of the room making a spider's web of green lines and figures around the walls of the room. Concentric circles of cyborgs hooked up via their ocular jacks to the mainframe pillar sat perfectly still save for occasional facial ticks as the numbers and columns shifted around them at a rate of knots to equal the speed of the ship they resided within. The supervisor slowly stalked around the room, observing their vitals and efficiency with one eye, keeping one eye on the fifth column of the seventy-third row, and keeping another on the creeping puddle forming on the ceiling. All of these things were at the top of the list for moderation today. Unfortunately, today had turned into tonight and little progress had been made. Within ten minutes, the daily report would have to be put into the archives, and there was still no sign that there was a way to solve any of the problems which had been prolonging their cruise through the Ascendance over the past decade.
The air inside The Antennae was undergoing an intensive filtration cycle. This gave a rather sour tang to the air which one could not quite place, but could generally taste. In the centre of the room so recently relocated, its first transmission was to a fledgling ship in the Scutum-Sagittarii Conflux. "Vector good. Extra ablutions for the next 5kly."
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The excursion was off to a good start, and Preach had made a lot of progress. He reckoned at the rate he was going, he'd make it to the Ascendance within the next few days. It had been a rather uneventful trip so far, his initial happiness that the route plotting had recently gotten some filters put in which allowed for far easier travel than the last time he'd gone corewards. He endeavoured to spend some time exploring around after his task was done, as he'd earned at least a week's real vacation after everything he'd been up to recently.
It wasn't long, however, before he was having philosophical debates with his AI and Zero over the nature of a journey's worth as growth and the best ways to travel ergo. He found himself trying to work out subroutines from a logical standpoint because he couldn't code them and began to believe that he might be able to issue commands into the base code by shouting them suddenly. They didn't get the joke when he explained it. He started to realise he might have to get on the radio for any far flung truckers afterwards before he went back to civilization to acclimatise a little after everything was done. These little affectations always spiralled quicker than one expected in the black.
He spent the next week plotting his way through the Ascendance. This took longer than he initially expected because he couldn't work out where he would be going after this and it was the lack of direction which hampered his decision as to which direction to approach the end of this leg of the journey. Ever one to be caught in minutiae, this simple task began to consume hours of his time. He began idly pondering all manner of incredulous plans as to what might await him, but by the time he'd worked out three concrete options he realised that the point of approach meant there wasn't much difference from a macro viewpoint unless they were going to ask him to clean their windows.
His journey through The Ascendance itself was one of the most ponderous experiences of Jaquel's life thus far. There was a certain gelatinous quality to the light in this sector, and it made everything feel very slow. the kind of slow which thuds on you like the stamping of a typewriter being used by an infant. It threatened to eat you up one day and turn you into marmalade so you could just gel with the ambience it was giving off. It made you feel like you were moving through sludge every day. Lemon marmalade is not the best colour to live within. He kept his spirits up through hitting the books for a week, before taking the last few days to engage in a mental fast by shutting himself in a soundproof room with an en suite. As he finished his cleansing mantras and began work on his orientation malas, the room began to slowly pulse red. He inhaled deeply and stood up, allowing the air to slowly filter through his nostrils as he rose. The door in front of him opened he walked out to clothe himself in the antechamber before heading to the viewing deck. He must have been fast with his mantras, he'd only been awake for three days. He checked his holo-feed to make sure his perception of time was still working. Seemed straight. He quickly combed his hair as he took the lift to the 32nd level, and walked to the viewing platform.
A grainy image appeared on the screen, flickering too much to be intelligible between the waves of static and screen tear. A thin raspy piano played an off-beat cluster of dissonant notes and the transmission abruptly ceased. Preach stepped down from the viewing platform and proceeded to take the way back towards the bridge. Once he made it back to the lifts he began drumming his fingers against his hip. As he departed the lifts he was starting a stuttering attempt at a beat box. By the time he made it back to the bridge he was walking whilst tapping along to the beat he was attempting to beatbox. As he distended onto the bridge with much acclaim, he shouted out the destination he was going with all the conviction of a megaship at ramming speed.
"AND COME IN FROM THE SOUTH-EAST!"
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The Antennae listed towards a new star, outwardly docile as it trundled through the back end of the system. Within the corridors bustled with the furore of interrupted scheduling. There was going to be a discrepancy. The approaching fledgling ship was proceeding at a rate far exceeding what they had expected. Everywhere in the ship there were people trying to cram two weeks into two days, and for the most part they were doing quite well. The cracks in their psyches were not likely to cause issues for at least another four days, so if they could get the pomp out of the way quickly they might be done in time that the crew wouldn't start to need extensive periods of retuning once it was over.
The filtration had been de-prioritised, which had the dual effect of removing the awkward odour from the station but also making everyone eighty three per cent more likely to contract a disease. It was a price worth paying according to all aboard. Meanwhile, the Halls of Observation were being meticulously re-purposed for the task ahead, and the head of the ship had retired to think deeply on which air flow setting would best suit the proceedings. For the next two days, nobody ate, and everyone subsisted on life support levels of power within the ship. Once the fledgling returned, they would be ready for his arrival.
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As Jaquel paced back and forth along the bridge, it seemed nothing in the known galaxy could comfort his nerves. He already had anything he would need in the cargo bay if he wanted it, but he knew even if he was to hazard an inventory of the goods he'd need to get himself into a hazmat suit and he didn't enjoy being in one of those. Instead, he took to revising his plans of approach to the coming event. He knew what he hoped might occur, but he'd been rather errant of late so part of him feared for the worst. It was an awkward position to be in, as Preach was used to acting without ambiguity due to his intel network in the bubble. He smirked slightly from the faintest corner of his mouth. He even had eyes on the ground in Colonia now, and things could get very interesting in the future if all the stars aligned for him. He decided to throw caution to the wind in the face of all his calculations and just get to whatever task he was given when it came. The decision was liberating, and he decided to spend
the next few days working on his physical health. He grabbed three bags of ELITE rare mushrooms)) and dragged them into the freezer, closing the door behind him. He dragged a bag to the centre of the freezer, chewed a handful and assumed horse riding stance. The smell of frozen flesh from Achenar and Leesti assailed his nostrils as he settled in, thankful now as he would be later for the mercy of shoes.
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The Antennae caught wind of a ship approaching from a few thousand light years away. A 'conda had been sighted stripped to the bone taking massive jumps across the system with the new FSD boosters they had back in the bubble. When combined with neutron jumps and the right skeletal ship engineering, these could drastically reduce the travel times as much as they allowed for travel to even further distances on the rim. And of course, all this was before even factoring in Jumponium. For many explorers, the rides around in SRVs searching for the right materials kept them sane, and others merely outsourced it into their cargo holds before they even left port. The addition of a few AFMUs didn't reduce the base integer enough to even make it a consideration as far as ratios of return were considered. And thus this madman had sliced like a comet through to their door beyond the speed they would ever have thought possible, and the task was ready to be started.
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As Jaquel exited the freezer, he finished chewing his first bite of mushrooms and got himself a towel. After drying off, he donned his robes of office and put on his most sombre air. This honour was something he would never have expected to achieve, let alone so early in his career. He could only assume it was something to do with his tying up slave routes with MPEF conversion units in their main ports working better numbers than he was compiling. They never gave him much applause when he was turning millions of slaves himself. Still, technology is exponential in its ability to enhance labour. Big game thinking, he supposed. Not that it was his place to say anyway. He put on his hat, which by now had extended by a full four inches of height since his last official event to denote his status. He decided which way to tilt it and oriented his wardrobe options accordingly. Clothes bespoke intent, as the adage went. He did not want to be misconstrued as soon as he was first strewn before them by the opening of the Gate of Observation. He deduced on using the original "Urban Camo" white and black. Surprisingly, after an aeon it was still being used as the colour of jungle addicts as well as the faithful. That had made for some very irksome situations in the annals of their history. But it was the original colours after all, and Jaquel thought a lot of tradition.
All that being said, he went from the freezer to the chopping board all within the space of half an hour. Considering the state the corridors had become over the past few weeks, he considered it a good innings. Zero and the AI stammered over each other with well-wishings, and he shut them off a few steps before the exit so as not to intrude upon the sacred audial space of the proceedings which were about to start. As the airlock towards the central docking ramp re-pressurised, he saw an assembly of Monolithians waiting for him on the deck, and he suppressed a smirk as he stepped off the edge of his ship and onto the second most holy space to and Monolithian, The Antenna itself. As he looked around him and drunk in the hails of a hundred rows of his brothers and sisters, he looked down to see no other than The Master himself. His frame had grown thinner, but his eyes were still as sharp as ever. The Master looked up towards him and nodded.
They walked together down the docking bay and the rows of Monolithians fell in behind them, filtering off towards their relevant posts as Jaquel and The Master walked down towards a level five lift. They took it up to a "box", which essentially served as a place to view foliage saved from before the original Zone was destroyed. There were types of fauna and flora on this ship which did not exist anywhere else, as the mutations were specific to the alien trash left on what at the time was a fragile ecosphere. Nowadays Earth was just a sprawling city reliant entirely on importation and Federal tithes. There was even a rumour they had tapped the core dry and a division of R+D on Terra was dedicated to keeping its growing status as a moon out of general geological knowledge bases by silencing the proponents of certain preposterous theories.
This sideways jaunt of Jaquel's thought process was brought to an abrupt halt by the first thing The Master had said to him since he was recruited.
"You didn't come when we expected you to, it must be said."
Preacher finally allowed himself to grin.
"I fit my craft as well as I was able, and plotted my own route which superseded the planner by a fair margin."
"Yes, you were faster than we had expected you to be. You were still second to the post, however. Someone beat you here by three weeks."
Jaquel's head span. He thought this was an exclusive celebration for his merits, not a contest for some offered contract. He decided to try and regain composure and play it cool.
"How does that affect my task, Master?"
The Master looked at him incredulously.
"Come now, my brother! It means that you are The Left Hand!"
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Preach gathered three grams of everything on board and stuck it in a blender. Then he drank it and walked into a restraining unit in his slave pens on the opposite end to the ones which were already populated. A few had been lost in the festivities, but nothing of his prime stock went missing beyond the tithe. As he prepared for three days of darkness and a rather long spirit quest, he went over his plan. A dull red light faded slowly and a slow droning pulse periodically spliced with Chthonic resonances ensued. His breathing became tainted with the smell of Chitin-Os leather and he let his thoughts swirl. As much as he thought highly of himself, to be chosen as a Hand of The Monolith is to be put in line for succession to the entire cult. The caveat was that it was a dubious honour to be given. The two Hands would each be told to come to the Antennae. Not something which was itself uncommon for any Preacher able to travel thirty thousand light years from the bubble without getting homesick. When they got there each would be designated as either the Right or the Left Hand. The Right Hand would have the honour of being the Mover of the Monolith, entrusted with its current location and tasked to find it another. the Left Hand would have the honour of traversing in search of The First Space Preacher, who tradition holds awaits beyond a black hole. The problem is no-one knows which black hole.
Whilst Jaquel had kissed his share of event horizons in his time, he'd never planned to jump headlong into the gaping maw of cosmic abyss before. The thought made him feel rather comfortable, but simultaneously a touch perturbed that he would have to let Scarlet and Sheng battle Orpheus for the rights to his Cutter. Still, there's always loopholes when these kinds of things turn up out of the black. All things considered, he might have a chance of a ticket through even if he didn't find himself a way back, and what an opportunity it would cause to the conversion rates! If he died through spaghettification then he can at least choose one which suited him to fall into. Most people went corewards as Left Hands so they could see their families in the bubble with a circuitous route. A Hand's Walk is always their route to plot, but it cannot take them more than a month to complete. Jaquel had nothing worth doing back home more important to him than planning his route out to Nansen's and then back to a suitable black hole. As he rushed out of the station as fast as his size one power distributor would let him, he started surveying a few known holes which had not yet been explored internally by any other Hands and creating a spreadsheet to collate his data.
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Two weeks later, and Preach was staring into Nansen's and deciding on the best way to fit a recon flight around four black hole clusters in order to let his gut make the final decision and still get finished on time. He was fuming that some random Jumponium-swilling rich kid had beaten him to The Antennae. His route plotting had gotten him through some of the dodgiest sectors on the Sagittarius-Carina Arm, but he couldn't afford jumponium due to his billions of credits in assets being tied up with Black Omega as much as they were with the MPEF. On paper he was a rich man, in reality he lived mostly on faith and drugs alone, and less so of the latter once he'd had to take a leadership position in the wing. Regardless, he decided that if he had been chosen by the Monolith to throw himself into the jaws of fate, that there must be something wonderful waiting for him in the stomach. He decided to start gathering his best knives for his suit, and settled into a contented potter around the ship once he said his own wake and began plotting the computer towards his points of self-appointed plausible suicide. He even started editing together bits from his security feeds to make for a nice travel video to watch wherever he ended up.
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As he rounded the fourth batch of black holes on his list, his determination started to become more habitual than fervent in nature. For all the amazing names out there, the variances in mass seemed to make little differences to his gut feelings that none of them were the right option. Beyond that and a rude little black hole within a light year of the pole star
of the system there wasn't much in the way of surprises either. He decided if the next group were as boring that he'd probably just head to The Tenebris and exile himself looking for an actual black hole in that mess. He knew there had to be one despite what the cartography said of the region. He'd left Zero within The Antennae's botany department, jokingly termed "The Ecologists". He'd reminded them that trying to run Zero through conversion machines was likely to make him melt or worse yet mulch. They understood how that could be an issue moving forwards, and agreed to merely feed him and try to put up with his dad jokes for as long as possible each day.
He didn't feel the need to back up the AI, as nothing able to be written had happened during his time away, and the video was more of a pet project than any artistic masterpiece. What he'd jury rigged before he left the bubble was a good enough prototype for better coders to work on if anyone cared. As for the people he knew, he could guarantee that the MPEF would contact Deggie and word would spread from there. Heck, Smeg 'Ed could tell a random punter and Zemina would probably even find out about it eventually if she didn't die in the year it would take for her after it was last year's news.
There he was, running his mind again. He was going to have to be honest with himself. He wasn't scared because he was tired. He'd been trying so hard to keep things together since he left Gcirthi on his first Cobra flight, but he'd been struggling to do so for a long time. If this was where things ended, it didn't bother him if it was going to be alone. He'd rather not have to face the look on his people's face if he managed to get back to the bubble anyway. He'd never been able to decide between his loyalties to his faith and his loyalties to his friends. It was starting to feel like all of them had betrayed him in some regard. The real kicker was that his own arrogant demeanour may well have contributed to his ability to become the fall guy even when his considerable skill set should have put him ahead with his deeds. They do say the difference 'twixt a terrorist and a freedom fighter is usually his journalist, and in this sense Jaquel was his own worst enemy. He'd only taken the nickname "the knife" because he was so terrible at rifle usage that he had no choice but to specialise in CQC during training as a child for his crew. He'd always liked the anonymous nature of the Preacherhood, and being cast into yet another limelight when he was just getting rather comfy in the less aggressive incarnation of Black Omega recently wasn't something he was too chuffed about either. Better that it was a short lived show after all, it seemed things would only get worse if they continued anyways. Usually this would be a great excuse for a bender, but the drugs were wearing off and the smell of Chitin-Os leather was starting to turn his stomach.
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The black hole known as Eye Of Ereshkigal loomed high in front of The Ravager, dwarfing its claim by sheer countenance. Whilst the Great Annihilator had the flavour of mechanical consumption and Sag A had the taste of the womb, this was like Tizer, you could only really say it tasted...red. It certainly felt more viscous. Its pull was excited, causing a fractal pattern in the trajectory shifts of debris which approached its reach. As was to be expected, the readings of his instruments held no purpose, so he decided to imagine it was like one of those games where you roll coins around differing ends of a funnel to see which one gets there first. If he could work out the right direction, he might be able to just swim The Ravager through on the current. Zero thought he was crazy and Jazz had equations to prove it, but it was the best option he had. He'd made his eulogy in the traditional manner, giving himself thirty seconds before engaging final vector to surmise himself in one sentence and commit it back to The Antennae. Luckily being five parts cut on Fesh he was able to stretch this time into a fair amount of thinking. Eventually, he decided his epitaph should be short and to the point like himself, so he settled on "Shanks a lot for the mammaries" just in case any of his people ended up looking for him in the register. Always best to leave them with a laugh, and preferably a small stab wound. If anyone was still in the ship with them he would've looked around to give them an assuring nod. As this was not the case, he nodded to himself gravely in lieu of any company and set what he saw as his best course of approach towards the event horizon which might not result in him getting spooled out like so much meaty yarn.