The Dekmár Roads: The Factions of Natorna

Chapter 10: Welcomed Transmission

The relay captain on the planet Esca was shocked when he heard of the survivor. Since there was no official scientific faction, this relay would have to fall into the control of an existing faction. This particular location was controlled by the defense faction. The relays captain's supervisor was on planet so he could notify him of the message that he reserved with little to no delay. He clicked transmit and a second later his supervisor opened the line of communication. The captain said, 

"Sir, I have some important news."

"What is it Capitan?"

"You found something?"

"Yes sir, there was a survivor found in the wreckage."

"Just one?"

"That is correct sir. Sadly though, that was the only one."

"That is tragic indeed, but at least one life was spared from that travesty."

The supervisor absorbed the information and formulated his words in his mind to best respond without coming off heartless. "Maybe we would be able to find out what happened so we could prevent this from happening in the future."

"Sir, I would not be so certain from the sounds of the report. He is currently unconscious, and it is said that he is unlikely to awake."

"Do you know if they need additional medical staff? With fresh eyes they might be able to come up with a different conclusion or wake him up."

"I assure you; additional staff would likely not change anything on their conclusion or ability. They were more than capable."

"Can you do anything for me, captain? Are we still in position to transmit to Conharsa? Can you send them a message about finding a survivor?"  

"I would be more than happy too; I understand you are stressed. No need to be snappy. However, we are no longer in direct transmission angle. We passed the area about 15 minutes ago which was after I received the message here myself."

"Damn. Okay. Go ahead and start rerouting it."

"Already on it."

The captain closed the com channel and opened up the contact book on his display screen. He was not originally planning on tasking anyone else for the survivor but figured that his supervisor would likely be upset if he did not. 'They may need some assistance for whatever reason. Making him conscience would not be one of those things, but I guess I never know. Maybe Norfener is right, but I highly doubt it. I really don't know how he even got this supervisory role in the first place.' The captain clicked a few buttons and found some medical staff on planet but kept searching for they would take too long to get to the vessel. Instead, he found some closer that could intercept them within a day or two. He wrote them a quick message and clicked send.

'Now the hard part.' The captain thought. 'To get a message to Conharsa.' He activated the rotational estimating program to see how long and if a message would be able to be received by a given planet. He added the parameters. 'Conharsa selected. Check. Okay, I see it is out of line and these are the available re-routing locations.' The captain hit a few more buttons and waited a few minutes for processing and mentally calculating before continuing. 'The message would need to go to three planets before it be properly aligned for Conharsa. And I see the window is not the greatest. Norfener really misjudges this job. He thinks he has it bad. Improper calculations for me, could result in a mis-transmission and could lose the information completely to space.'

The captain set the coordinates and readied the relay to transmit. He then wrote out the message with notes for forwarding. He was a little worried about the second location. The window was so small that there was only fifteen minutes by the time they would get the message before they have to send it out. There was not much the next relay had to do, simply mark off the previous instructions and click send to the next. A few minutes max. 'That really all depended on if someone was there to receive it at the next station and not away from the desk for any reason. That could make the mark harder for me to make.' He thought. Hoping for the best, he clicked transmit.

The communication array on the planet Katlena received the message about Beonaiha Station concerning the tragic events. The planet was not very populated due to the habitability issues such aslow atmosphere and unstable temperatures. It could be hot in the morning andsnow in the evening or vice versa. Katlana would be a nice place to live due tothe proper proximity to Natorna if the issues were not present.

        Like most of the communication arrays in the system, they were operated by the Lascarta defense faction. No personnel were present at the time of the message pinged them. They were all busy with more localized issues.

"Sergeant, there is more over here." Said a Lascart member who was assigned to a special measures squad. His team were out in the city looking for damage from fires or currently burning areas.

The sergeant asked, "Another explosion or did the fire spread there too?"

The squad member on scene looked around. He was standing at the foot of a pile of rubble. The entire square was pulverized. He continued saying. "There is quite a bit of fire here still. Although, it is fortunately isolated. I think it was from another explosion."

"That was what I was afraid of. The fires from the explosions tend to burn faster, hotter and they are more difficult to eliminate. Is your location accurate? We have had some ping devices significantly inaccurate."

The member tapped a finger on the right side of his helmet which expanded various information up onto his Heads up Display on his visor. He read the data then glanced around again. "It is off a bit but it's not bad. It is showing maybe ten measures of inaccuracy favoring the east."

"That is fine. At least it is in the vicinity. Your device needs to be updated. It is not as terrible as others, but it is close enough to get the fire squad there quickly and not need to wander around wondering what we are talking about. I will dispatch them here in a minute. If you can do it safely enough, look around and see if you can find any signs of life. If you find anyone but are unable to reach them, just mark it on the map. And do not forget to add the appendix describing the degrees that it is off."

"Will do sarge. May I ask about what happened here?

His sergeant was not sure what he was asking. He came back and said, "How do you mean? You can see it for yourself."

Quickly, the squad member said, "Yes, but not what I meant. We were attacked, correct? But who would attack us?"

"That would appear evident. But, I have to admit it is strange. No, we were not expecting an attack by no one. We also have no idea who would or could even attack us. From the intel that I have, no evidence that anyone had done this to us. No one has, at least admitted, or took the credit for it. I would imagine that something like this, so large and obvious, someone would want to take credit for it. It would be like a statement of some woes against the government or entity. I have to say, from these, it is looking like it was not intentional."

The squad member was about to shout something out but stopped himself. He then asked, "How could it be anything but intentional. These silos don't blow themselves up, do they?"

"You can look around them more carefully when there is no fire. But what we have determined is that it was not a purposeful explosion. I have seen evidence myself that shows that it was likely an accident."

"How?"

"That is what I would like to know. I am just telling you what I have heard and what I have seen. It is strange, for sure. How could this happen? It should not have been possible for it to be an accident. It should have been someone doing this to us. Unfortunately, we have found no evidence that it was anything but accidental."  

The sergeant went back into the communication building that he was technically assigned to. Being in the Lascarta faction, sometimes one would have a large scope of tasks suddenly thrust onto their shoulders, such as overseeing damage control. He arrived at the array room just in time. He re-routed it with a few minutes to spare. He thought to himself, 'Why did they give such a small window? Could they not have calculated the timing better? I wish there could have been more time, then I could have had that time to save a copy of this urgent transmission and been able to read it. It's a little too late for that now since it is on its' way. If it is that important, I will hear about it later, one way or another.'

The sergeant perused the system, ensuring there were no more messages and then went back outside to check on the squads.