Revenant Slaves Chapter 16: Chapter 15: Luna

Read chapter 16 of Revenant Slaves by Zee on NovelPedia.

Chapter 15: Luna As soon as Luna undid the belt holding her to her seat, she felt herself start to float. Thankfully, she had been trained in zero-G maneuvers. She propelled herself to the ceiling, where handholds allowed her to hang, and began slowly making her way to the hatches opening all around the elevator, leading to the Transit Room above. Luna escaped through the nearest hatch. She entered the next chamber just as Avraham floated in, followed by the two knights accompanying him. Once they were all inside, an emergency alert pinged, warning them to move away from the hatches. After the third alert, the hatches closed with a hiss. “We will be using Transit Rail Five. Hook yourselves to it,” Avraham ordered, turning to the communications panel. He typed a command and floated back, attaching himself to the rail line marked Five, along with Luna and the knights. The speakers chimed, and a woman’s voice announced, “Welcome, Lord Inquisitor! Everything has been prepared for your immediate departure. We await your command to start the transfer to Ring Station Five.” Avraham glanced at his team, satisfied that all of them were properly hooked, before replying, “Please proceed.” “Acknowledged! May the Flame protect you on your journey, My Lord.” The speakers then went silent. Moments later, the hatch on the far side of the room opened. The rail lines built into the roof powered up, and their tethers began to pull them along at a moderate pace. Luna worried they might collide with other spacefarers in the port at the speed the transit hook was moving them. But as soon as they exited the transfer room, the hook turned sharply left, dragging them along. Alarm signals lit the way ahead, and people lined the walls, leaving a clear path for their swift passage. As they looped around the main station and entered another transfer tube leading to their specific ring station, Luna recalled the orbital station schematics she had studied among her many lessons before her first spacefaring adventure. The central orbital station was tethered to the planet below and balanced by a counterweight above to maintain a stationary orbit relative to the planet. The ring stations, however, could not operate in the same way. They served as hooking points and launch pads for ships, and any misalignment could damage the elevator and tethering cables. They maintained their connection to the central station via transfer tubes that could detach in the event of critical failures. (Orbital Station Render Below) https://i.ibb.co/VpYPd7jZ/56dc40c3-4cc1-4cf8-98cb-29f4c337c3eb.png Luna swallowed at the thought of a critical failure but stayed still as they reached the next transfer point. This was the final station. One door separated them from their ship. If Luna’s estimate was correct, this was Avraham’s private Inquisitorial vessel, equipped with a fully functional command center and staff to assist him in his duties. ‘It must be very crowded’ , she thought. The last time she had traveled into space, Avraham had made them take freighters on public transport to another planet. The experience had shown Luna the perils and dangers of space travel, and it had terrified her away from venturing into the dark, endless ocean of space again on such a vessel, and from the plight of the people desperate enough to make regular journeys on them. Luna expected this time to be different. She desperately wished it would be. They floated into the airlock room leading to their ship. After they had entered, another alert light came on, signaling that the door behind them was locked and it was now safe to open the airlock leading to the ship. As they did, Luna imagined, just for a second, what would happen if the docking mechanism failed and let in the cold void of space. She shivered, and a rational part of her mind soothed her by remembering that the system would have detected such an irregularity and would not have allowed the airlock to open. They entered the ship, and the fi