Exodus: Pilgrim's Hope By Julian Rogers
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of this author.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblanceto real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dedication
I dedicate this book tomy father Gareth Rogers, without whom none of this would be possible/
Chapter 1 – A Stranger in the Midst
The lightflooded in at the edges of her consciousness and overwhelmed hersenses so as to fill every inch of her mind. Slowly the synapses inher brain fired and a half remembered memory of awareness came backto her, but in those first few feelings that is all it was; a halfremembered memory. Or even less than that, maybe just a feeling,like trying to rouse oneself from a long deep sleep, and not wishingto do so as the world felt too painful. First came back feelings oflong forgotten nightmares that had filled her consciousness throughthe eternal dark that was her only real memory, to which she stillclung. Then came back the terror of the pain and suffering she hadfelt during that long night and the torturous agony that had consumedher so. Then she felt elusive memories of herself and a life thatlingered just around the corner and the faces she could only glimpseout of the corner of her eye, which vanished like vapours the momentshe tried to look in their direction.
Then camethe whispers in the distance, just out of earshot she couldn’t hearwhat they were saying, but instinctively knew they referring her. And they came closer, and clearer. At first she couldn’tunderstand what they were saying and it just sounded like thejabbering of some infernal nocturnal rodent. But then they becameclearer and start to form discernible sounds, which morphed intowords and then into sentences and whole paragraphs. And then shelost to the dark once more, with one question screaming through hermuddled consciousness. “Who am I??” her mind screamed, but herlips refused to form the words into language.
For whatseemed an eternity, or last an age, she continued to cycle thoughthese moments of almost being aware of herself and her surroundingsand losing herself in the darkness that seemed so inviting andwelcoming. Safe, she felt safe in the darkness, it was what sheknew, what she liked, as it meant that she didn’t have to thinkabout her past and that she had no responsibility to it. Sooner orlater the burning spark of life in her, the supernova that was fullconsciousness would win out and she glare once more into the moralworld that now stared at her. Once more the mind would burn with theyearning to answer the question that screamed again and again in her;“Who am I??” But this time her lips cried out with her and theshadowy figures in their medical style gowns stared at her.
“Sheappears to be human, at least,” one whisper in the dark, said.
“How canthat be?” Another more senior sounding whisper asked of the first. Then there was silence, but not quite silence this time. Barelyfamiliar background noises penetrated the darkness and reached herears. Familiar sounding whirs and buzzes of computers and other suchmachinery, the distant chattering of people discussing unknown andstrange topics. Words that sounded like the memory of English cameto her from time to time and she was able to piece together somethingof where she was.
Theobvious came to her first of course; this was a medical facility muchlike the hospitals that she once knew epochs ago. The rest cameslowly over the days and weeks that she continued to slip betweenthis world and the darkness that had been her constant companion forunknown decades. She was able to gather that the hospital wasn’ton Earth as she had assumed, but on another planet. How she gotthere was still something of mystery to both herself and her hosts. From the occasional word and phrase that she could gleam from thechatter, she wasn’t a prisoner as yet, just a mere curiosity. Apparently some deep space scout ship that had picked up her pod andbrought her to the facility were the hospital was located had foundher.
After manyscans and much debate amongst the senior officers of the facility itwas decided to open her pod and see what or who she was. Or even ifshe were still alive. It didn’t take them that long to find outthat she was human; a cursory glance at her would tell them that sheappeared to be a human female in her mid-twenties or thereabouts. Their medical equipment would later confirm that their eyes were notdeceived by her appearance and she was indeed a human female who wasapproximately twenty five or twenty six years old, who was incomparative good health for someone who had floated in the void ofspace for countless ages.
Consciousnesscame to her from time to time in order to remind her that she was inthe land of the living and not some ageless spirit roaming throughthe timeless void. During one of these relatively short periods ofawareness a name came to her, or rather the feeling of a memory of aname. Not just any name, but her name. Sarah, that was it, SarahMcKenzie, but beyond that there was still nothing more than a feelingof a memory of life of living. How she had come to be in some podfloating the emptiness between the planets, Sarah still did not knowand she was aware that sooner or later there would be questions askedthat would require answers that she did not have. All Sarah could doknow was to bide her time and hope feelings would materialise intosolid memories and allow her to provide the answers that her hostswould require.
“Ah goodmorning, you are awake then” a male sounding voice penetrated herthoughts.
“Yes itwould certainly seem that way,” Sarah found herself saying to theman standing at her bedside. He was at least 6 feet tall, had fairlywell chiselled features and was in his forties. Or so Sarah guessed. He was wearing a white coat over his more general scrub likegarments and had a name tag on his chest. Obviously a doctor shemused, as she looked up at him waiting for him to introduce himselfin that strictly medical way that all doctors had.
“Myname…” here we go she thought... “is Dr Jeremiah Dixon and I amthe CMO of this facility. I realise that you must be ratherdisorientated after your ordeal and would prefer to rest, but we doneed to ask you some questions. While you are awake.” His voicewas fairly typical of a middle-aged man, Sarah thought to herself, orat least what she thought one should like. Authoritative andserious, even more so for being a highly ranked doctor. With littleeffort Sarah looked confused, as though she were searching for herlife history through the muddle mix of thoughts and musing thanthrough her brain.
After afew minutes, but seemed like hours of deafening silence, she manageda whisper of a reply. “I think my name is Sarah, Sarah McKenzieand I don’t remember much more than that.” Her voice seemedstrange and forced to her ears so used to hearing nothing from,except silence.
“I guessthat will have to do for now Sarah, but the CO would like to speak assoon as possible” that sounded ominous she mused, probably wants toknow what secrets I am here to steal or what I am here to sabotage. Sarah then turned onto her side, closed her eyes and once more fellinto the reassuring darkness that had become oh so familiar to her.
When Sarahwoke she was alone, most of the medical staff hustled and bustledabout their day-to-day routine like white worker bees in a hive. Shecould hear the hustle outside of her room found it rather reassuringto know that around her life went on. After trying to listen to thegoings on around her she turned inward and attempted to look intoherself for some of the answers that she would need to prove in thenear future. Sarah knew her name, and that she was a woman, butbeyond there was nothing substantial to lay the foundations of theexperiences that would have made up her life before the pod.
There wassomething that puzzled her more immediately than anything, the waythe doctor had described it, it seemed as though she had been foundin space in some kind of escape pod. This, if true, would mean thatshe was fleeing something, some kind of disaster or explosion aboarda ship. But the fine details of which eluded her for the time being. Or had she been exiled for some unspeakable crime of mutiny orworse.
The latterpossibility felt so completely wrong to her that she practicallyeliminated it straight off the bat, but then the idea of fleeingdanger didn’t sit right either. From what Sarah had managed togather from the staff no human had been out as far as she would havehad to have been yet and that worried her somewhat. If that were thecase then many questions sprang to her mind so quickly and disorderlythat she found it difficult to think, let alone form them into somecoherent order and try to answer them one at time. Sarah did decidethat for the time being anyway she would concentrate on what she didknow and hope that the rest would fall into place later. By whichtime, of course, she her head began to ache and she decided that thebest thing to do would be to rest and allow her mind to heal itselfat its own pace.
She thenfell into another uneasy sleep, disturbed by images of battles anddeath that were so vivid that her nostrils were filled with thestench of dead and decaying bodies. One of the images she managed toremember later was of herself standing in the midst of the chaos ofbattle, the stench of blood and death in her nostrils and then thedarkness came again…..
When Sarahnext awoke it was to the soft baritone of a man of similar age to herwho later introduced himself as Commander Marcus de Benedict, thecommanding office of the facility where Sarah had been a patient forthe last couple of months. He was discussing her current andimproving condition with Doctor Dixon, who was saying that in thevery near future Sarah should be well enough to leave the medicalbay. Or at least for short periods at a time and any loss of memoryshould not be permanent as there was no organic damage to the brainthat he could detect.
However,there were times where the mind itself decided that certain eventswere too painful to remember and simply decided not to remember suchthings. This sometimes happened in the case of extreme psychologicaltrauma or some stressful event that the mind simply chose to erase.Either way at least some recall should be possible, but it would be avery slow process and that the Commander should be patient and moveslowly. This was because if he was to move too quickly and Sarahrecalled painful memories before she was ready, then there could beuntold damage.
Sarahwatched the two men for a while and mused how very little things hadchanged since the last time she was amongst the living. Her nextthought was that is funny, funny strange that is, that she shouldthink such a thing and that perhaps somewhere the long the line hadin fact died, but then how was this possible as she was now clearlyvery much alive. Perhaps this was merely a dream, a faint glimmer oflife that seemed all too real to the dreamer.
Hermusings were cut short as she could the two men had now stoppeddiscussing her and looked at her with the same bemused looks on theirfaces that she must have had a few moments.
“Nice tosee that you are awake and aware of your surroundings” the youngerof the two said in a slightly more formal tome than she had heard himuse a few moments before.
For abrief moment she considered her reply and came to the conclusion thather only course of action was pure and innocent honesty, and hopethat things would come back to her quickly.
“Well itwould be nice to know how one is doing,” she said.
The doctorthen repeated what he had said to Commander de Benedict to Sarah andthe Commander listened intently trying to gauge how Sarah reacted tohearing the news of her condition first hand. All the young manwould be able to see in Sarah’s face was the intense concentrationof someone listening to another speak and trying to look as thoughthey were listening intently.
“So Iwill live then,” she said when Doctor Dixon had finished.
“Yes Ishould think so,” He replied.
Then therewas another moment of awkward silence as Commander de Benedictconsidered how he should question this mysterious young woman beforehim. As with most military installations there had been acts ofsabotage and espionage over the years. There were those factions whobelieved that mankind was not ready to break out into the cosmos andthen there were those believed that they should share the fate oftheir soon to be dead home world.
Neitherposition particularly appealed to the Commander, at least partlybecause he was a career military man, and partly because heconsidered both to be rather backward looking. It had now been overa century since preparations for the mass exodus had begun, and overtwo centuries since it had been discovered that Sol was dying andthat the Earth would soon be uninhabitable. Leaving to search fornew home was both the pragmatic and the adventurous thing to do.
It hadtaken over fifty years for the planets leaders to move away fromtheir position of complete denial, to dithering inaction. But soonenough they did manage to agree to a course of action. A plannedexodus of as many suitable individuals to a new planet over the nexthundred years or so, whish not as an easy a task as it sounded. First possible new destinations had to be, while the technology totransport a whole civilisation and the sum of its knowledge had to bedesigned and built.
The latterwas already well on its way, as for the past few years man hadcolonised both the moon and his nearest neighbour, Mars. There werealso transports that regularly and relatively quickly commutedbetween the two. Soon after colonisation a regular supply routesbetween the two colonies of man and his home world had been set up. Once this had been accomplished a space station in orbit aroundJupiter’s largest moon had been planned and built that there was adeep space exploration mission that made frequent trips behind thegas giant.
It was oneof these exploration ships that found what they thought was some kindof escape pod that had one sole occupant. That sole occupant was nowsitting in the medical bay of the main military outpost on Mars,Terra Alpha. And who was about to be question by the bases commandingofficer.
When Sarahnext awoke it was to the soft baritone of a man of similar age to herwho later introduced himself as Commander Marcus de Benedict, thecommanding office of the facility where Sarah had been a patient forthe last couple of months. He was discussing her current andimproving condition with Doctor Dixon, who was saying that in thevery near future Sarah should be well enough to leave the medicalbay. Or at least for short periods at a time and any loss of memoryshould not be permanent as there was no organic damage to the brainthat he could detect.
However,there were times where the mind itself decided that certain eventswere too painful to remember and simply decided not to remember suchthings. This sometimes happened in the case of extreme psychologicaltrauma or some stressful event that the mind simply chose to erase.Either way at least some recall should be possible, but it would be avery slow process and that the Commander should be patient and moveslowly. This was because if he was to move too quickly and Sarahrecalled painful memories before she was ready, then there could beuntold damage.
Sarahwatched the two men for a while and mused how very little things hadchanged since the last time she was amongst the living. Her nextthought was that is funny, funny strange that is, that she shouldthink such a thing and that perhaps somewhere the long the line hadin fact died, but then how was this possible as she was now clearlyvery much alive. Perhaps this was merely a dream, a faint glimmer oflife that seemed all too real to the dreamer.
Hermusings were cut short as she could the two men had now stoppeddiscussing her and looked at her with the same bemused looks on theirfaces that she must have had a few moments.
“Nice tosee that you are awake and aware of your surroundings” the youngerof the two said in a slightly more formal tome than she had heard himuse a few moments before.
For abrief moment she considered her reply and came to the conclusion thather only course of action was pure and innocent honesty, and hopethat things would come back to her quickly.
“Well itwould be nice to know how one is doing,” she said.
The doctorthen repeated what he had said to Commander de Benedict to Sarah andthe Commander listened intently trying to gauge how Sarah reacted tohearing the news of her condition first hand. All the young manwould be able to see in Sarah’s face was the intense concentrationof someone listening to another speak and trying to look as thoughthey were listening intently.
“So Iwill live then,” she said when Doctor Dixon had finished.
“Yes Ishould think so,” He replied.
Then therewas another moment of awkward silence as Commander de Benedictconsidered how he should question this mysterious young woman beforehim. As with most military installations there had been acts ofsabotage and espionage over the years. There were those factions whobelieved that mankind was not ready to break out into the cosmos andthen there were those believed that they should share the fate oftheir soon to be dead home world.
Neitherposition particularly appealed to the Commander, at least partlybecause he was a career military man, and partly because heconsidered both to be rather backward looking. It had now been overa century since preparations for the mass exodus had begun, and overtwo centuries since it had been discovered that Sol was dying andthat the Earth would soon be uninhabitable. Leaving to search fornew home was both the pragmatic and the adventurous thing to do.
It hadtaken over fifty years for the planets leaders to move away fromtheir position of complete denial, to dithering inaction. But soonenough they did manage to agree to a course of action. A plannedexodus of as many suitable individuals to a new planet over the nexthundred years or so, whish not as an easy a task as it sounded. First possible new destinations had to be, while the technology totransport a whole civilisation and the sum of its knowledge had to bedesigned and built.
The latterwas already well on its way, as for the past few years man hadcolonised both the moon and his nearest neighbour, Mars. There werealso transports that regularly and relatively quickly commutedbetween the two. Soon after colonisation a regular supply routesbetween the two colonies of man and his home world had been set up. Once this had been accomplished a space station in orbit aroundJupiter’s largest moon had been planned and built that there was adeep space exploration mission that made frequent trips behind thegas giant.
It was oneof these exploration ships that found what they thought was some kindof escape pod that had one sole occupant. That sole occupant was nowsitting in the medical bay of the main military outpost on Mars,Terra Alpha. And who was about to be question by the bases commandingofficer.