Penance (RN: Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

and he appeared in the corridor ahead of her. The commander secured the door giving the handle a double shaking twist to ensure security and then strolled purposely forward, with a quick smile and a curt “Crewman,” as he passed. She returned the acknowledgment accompanied by an attentive nod and glanced after him as he stepped through the bulkhead leading to the bridge, with the door whirring shut behind him. Brula stared after him for several seconds before continuing on to her duty station that was due to start in four minutes.
    This was her first penetrating voyage on an actual genuine deep service vessel, or DSV, which meant everyday contact with full insignia command staff rather than the spit and polish junior officers who had dominated the majority of her near Earth service. Yet, despite the time she had served on the Bristol, she still found such relaxed proximity to upper echelon command staff to be a little unnerving. Up to this point the majority of her RNO service had been between the Earth and the stations or facilities local to the Sol system, with only the rare jaunt aboard a DSV to check for any susceptibility to Transit Induced Psychosis -TIP, or gate weariness as it was commonly known, the cocooning of the ship during gate travel.
    On entering gate travel, a ship essentially became a magnetic bullet injected between the fabrics of space time, like an orange pip squeezed between two fingers, without breaking any laws so time dilation never applied.
    During such transits the ship left behind the peripheral sensory stimuli: the sounds, observations and sensations of everyday life, with many first timers complaining of the ‘anechoic chamber’ affect, or the lack of stars out of what few windows the ship possessed. It was as if the Bristol had sunk into a tar pit, with no light visible to the front or rear, and only the keenest sighted able to make out a faint belt of speckled white, like a distant galactic arm, surrounding the midpoint of the vessel.
    Every crewman on reaching the rank of first hand had to take several trips on a DSV to check for susceptibility to TIP. The results of which could greatly impact your chances of ascending the promotion ladder.
    As many as fifty percent of RNO personnel were prone to gate weariness, which limited their ability to participate in the deeper missions and saw TIP susceptible officers reduced to berating their subordinates as a way of releasing the frustration generated by their inability to tolerate FTL travel.
    Piped in audio stimuli and 3D screens went some way to relieving the stress, but could never completely remove the feeling of disorientation and a low travel sickness. Those who did feel such qualms kept it to themselves, however, for fear of being rotated off the ship.
    Brula would be glad to see all that behind her. She had never felt the effects of gate weariness and this mission would earn her the gold collar dash that identified her as FTL mission tolerant. Not just travel tolerant, the ability to travel to a quarter station without sinking into a wide eyed, face scratching psychosis, but mission tolerant. The ability to stay on a ship for indefinite periods without succumbing to gate weariness. A sure source of future favours and her pick of the juicy assignments once she was sufficiently high on the ladder.
     
    Nearing the midpoint of the corridor, Brula passed by the officer’s quarters and neared that of Commander Denz. She glanced toward the door, a door behind which lay the answers to so many speculations and the mysterious screaming the crew often buzzed about, but she herself had never witnessed. There were those that claimed to know the reasons for the tormented wailings that came from within. People who whispered of supernatural ills, who claimed they were this far out to dispose of a demon, a demon trapped inside Denz that was to be released by a spoken incantation when the ship could go no further. Brula laughed openly, instinctively