Where No One Can Hear You Kreme by Kris P. Kreme
Midway between Earth and a planet called Fantose 3, Transport Ship 609 has suffered a major malfunction. The Core Computer is losing power, shutting systems down, gravity fluctuating in dangerous waves that threaten to tear the ship apart.
Only transport ship operator Dennis and Kira have any hope of righting the wrongs that otherwise might leave their fates sealed and alone in the dead of space.
Can the many years of experience Dennis has keep his head in the game as a young fresh faced Kira takes it on herself to put her body on the line crawling back through leaking cargo to reset the computer? Or will this twisted tale take corruption in the cosmos to all new frontiers?
Dennis has been working long distance earth transports like Transport Ship 609 for more years than he can remember, and the truth is half of those years are spent in suspended stasis pods. It’s a life that some might say sounds exciting, adventurous, voyaging to distant worlds, but the jaded man has learned that it’s essentially a glorified delivery job. Only the latest job has driven him to the point of screaming, and before it’s over those screams may take on a new passion never before known in the cosmos.
They used to say that in space no one could hear you scream, something Dennis remembers from an old earth movie hundreds of years ago. If there’s one thing he has learned after years on this assignment it’s how to pass the time. Each transport ship is assigned two like Dennis, partners to divide up time awake monitoring the ship. While the ships are all auto-piloted from start to finish, the requirement for human operators just in case has never ceased over the centuries. So while Dennis is awake he watches old movies, but a recent error in the bucket of bolts transport ship inexplicably deleted his movies from the core computer.
So Dennis is about as bored as boring empty space can get, until something happens that has never happened before in his many years in the job, a Condition Alpha Alert.
Six months in on a routine transport to the planet Fantose, a glorified pleasure planet where those rich enough traveled to live out their days breathing in the rejuvenating atmosphere, Dennis is faced with a crisis that means all vacations are off and suddenly space is a whole lot less boring.
Forced to wake up his partner in stasis, Dennis can’t even count on her expertise since Kira is fresh out of Earth Transport Academy, a by the books young woman who hasn’t said more than a few yes sirs and no sirs the few times they passed each other between shifts.
Together the two of them will discover a nightmare situation where the computer core of their advanced but well used old transport ship was suffering an electrical drain. Having deleted data to try and keep critical functions going the core has finally reached a point where something needs to be done. Gravity waves are affecting the rear of the ship and those gravity fluctuations could literally tear them apart. The cargo is shifting, crashing, but navigation and course are still active.
If the core computer is not reset at the computer itself, then systems will continue degrading and Dennis will truly learn the lonely isolation of a tragedy in space. Yet the core computer is located behind the cargo at the rear of the ship, and between he and Kira and that computer reset lever are increasingly random bubbles of gravity distortions, deadly ones that can literally reshape a person trapped inside them, stretching or crushing, all without rhyme or reason.
It’s a twisted tale of corruption in the cosmos as the Kreme launches into a whole new genre light years from Earth. Will Dennis and Kira save their lives but in the process change everything about their relationship? Will the smaller Kira be able to avoid those gravity distortions and clamor through spilled cargo leaking fumes of who knows what on its way to Fantose 3? Just what is the leaking cargo doing to both of their thoughts? Find out in a tale of isolation millions of miles from anyone else, Where No One Can Hear You Kreme!
Recent Comments