Faster than the Speed of Love

Chapter 6 - Rock music and Oversized T-shirts

Chapter 6

(3rd Person)

For the next two weeks following Kyna’s first speech as leader, people were constantly coming to her and asking her everything and anything. At first it was nice, having small talk with people about the possibilities of the happenings when on the mission, but eventually Kyna got sick of constant interruptions in her work. So she snapped, and designated hours in which people could talk to her without prior planning – 6pm til 8 pm on Monday to Thursday, and that was it. She worked during the day, and rested in the later part of the evenings. It was a struggle to find a sustainable balance with social interactions, a minimum of 7 hours sleep and the preparations for the Ceenox System expedition 6 weeks away.

So one Friday night, after returning to her living quarters at 6:30, she decided to have a night to herself, thinking she wouldn’t have any visitors. However, ‘a night to herself’ in Kyna’s personal vocabulary meant playing some music and working on her projects from the comfort of her SOIE assigned room in her comfy sleeping clothes. Kyna entered her room and undid her hair from its’ ponytail she wore when she worked, but left her reading glasses on. She changed out of her floral button down blouse and black skirt, and put on her too-small-to-be-seen-in-public sleeping shorts… which her more like sleeping short shorts, and her oversized blue t-shirt she slept in.

She blasted her rock music, with a little piece of mind knowing that her room was sound proof so it didn’t matter how loud she played it. She got out her laptop and her blue white-board marker, and got to work.

John’s POV

The Director had given me a copy of the mission reports from the previous SOIE explorers settlement in the Ceenox System 20 years ago. The ones who had made first contact with the Agethans, and formed the alliance with them, however due to unknown circumstances, one planet Agethans betrayed them and the alliance, and destroyed the entire settlement killing every single SOIE member there at the time. 79 people died. And the lucky people who were off site at the time returned to Earth to report what happened.

It was because of this attack that Earth broke the alliance, and refrained from trying to return to the Ceenox until now, when the SOIE had the resources and adequately skilled members in order to cope against the advance Agethal technology, and there attacks should the situation arise again. They didn’t want a repeat of what happened in the past.

After briefly skimming over the file I decided that Kyna should be with me when we read the reports, so that we both had an equal understanding of the situation, instead of one of us having the upper hand. I knew Kyna had recently assigned specific times in which she’d allow people to see her unannounced, but I thought she’d make an exception for me.

I walked towards her living quarters and knocked on the sliding electronic doors. I waited for a while but heard no answer. I knocked again but didn’t hear an answer. I switched on my radio, and clicked it on, having tuned it to Kyna’s personal frequency. “Kyna are you ok?” I paused and waited again, still no response. “Dr. Lawrence please respond” I said, hoping using her other title would provoke her if she were playing a sick prank of some sort.

Fed up with waiting, and worried like crazy that she had passed out or something whilst in her room, I decided to use my high profile IDC to get into her room. An Identification Detection Code (IDC for short) is an authorization code given to SOIE personnel and their allies which allows them to recognize inbound Starlink travellers as friendly. Each SOIE member receives an IDC, unique to each and every agent. Since each IDC is different, you can instantly see who they are when the code is present, and depending on your status in the SOIE ranks, your IDC can get you into various areas.