The Signal Queue
The queue had 1,247 messages waiting. Nora Kaine watched the number tick up to 1,248 as another transmission arrived from the outer colonies.
She’d been at her console for six hours. She’d be here for six more.
The communications array on Relay Station Epsilon-7 handled traffic for thirty-two settlements scattered across four light-years. Most of them had populations under five hundred. A few barely had fifty. They sent messages to Earth, to other colonies, to family members they hadn’t seen in years. Sometimes they just sent messages because the act of transmitting proved they still existed.
Nora’s job was to make sure those messages got through.
She queued the next transmission, a text file from New Nairobi: “Medical supplies running low. Requesting resupply within thirty days. Priority: moderate.” The colony had sent the same message three times this month, each time with a slightly higher priority rating. Last month it had been “low.” Next month it would probably be “urgent.”
The message went into the buffer, added to the stack bound for UEN Logistics Command. Response time: anywhere from two days to two weeks, depending on how busy the clerks were. Whether supplies actually shipped depended on inventory, transit availability, and a dozen other factors Nora couldn’t control.
She flagged it as medical-related and moved to the next message.
Personal transmission, audio file, New Brisbane to Earth. A woman’s voice, tired and careful: “Mom, I know it’s been a while. Things are… we’re okay. Daniel started school last month. They’re teaching in shifts because they only have three teachers. He’s learning, though. He drew you a picture. I’ll send it next transmission.”
The file included an attached image: crayon stick figures under a purple sky. Nora routed it to Earth’s civilian network and added it to the priority queue. Personal messages got bumped up when children were involved. It was an unofficial rule, one the supervisors pretended not to notice.
1,249 messages.
The next one made her pause.
Origin: Genesis Station. Destination: CSV Wanderer. Subject: Location request.
She opened it. Text only, three lines: “This is Genesis Station calling CSV Wanderer. Acknowledge receipt. You are forty-eight hours overdue. Respond immediately.”
Nora pulled the ship registry. CSV Wanderer: independent freighter, crew of four, last known position in the Centauri shipping lanes. Expected arrival at Genesis Station six days ago.
She checked the broader network. No distress calls. No debris reports. No Vethrak activity in the region for eighteen months.
Didn’t mean anything. Space was big, and a ship could disappear for a hundred reasons that had nothing to do with aliens.
She forwarded the message, flagged it for UEN Search and Rescue, and made a note in the log. The bureaucracy would take it from there. Maybe S&R would dispatch a patrol. Maybe they’d file it as low priority and wait another week. Maybe the Wanderer would show up tomorrow with a fried communication array and an embarrassed captain.
Nora tried not to think about the other possibilities.
1,251 messages.
An hour passed. Two. The messages cycled through her console: supply requests, personal letters, status reports, transit schedules. She sorted, routed, flagged, and forwarded. Her hands moved through the workflow without thinking, muscle memory built from three years of twelve-hour shifts in a chair that was supposed to be ergonomic but absolutely wasn’t.
Most of the messages were routine. Boring, even. The colonies needed things: food, fuel, parts, medicine. People missed each other. Captains confirmed arrivals and departures. Engineers reported equipment failures. Teachers asked for textbooks. Farmers reported harvest yields.
It was all desperately mundane and desperately important.
At hour eight, Nora’s relief arrived: Paulo, younger and somehow still enthusiastic about the job. He dropped into the adjacent console and pulled up his own queue.
“Quiet shift?” he asked.
“Standard.” She stretched, vertebrae popping. “Genesis is looking for the Wanderer. Forty-eight hours overdue. I flagged it for S&R.”
Paulo nodded, already scrolling through his own backlog. “Probably a broken comm.”
“Probably.”
She logged out and pushed away from the console. Behind her, the queue ticked upward: 1,253 messages. Tomorrow it would be more. Next week, more still. The colonies kept transmitting because they had to, because staying connected was the difference between civilization and isolation.
The relay station kept receiving because someone had to.
Nora walked the corridor to her quarters, passing viewports that offered glimpses of the void. Somewhere out there, thirty-two colonies clung to survival. Somewhere out there, people waited for messages that might never come.
She thought about the drawing: stick figures under a purple sky. A child on New Brisbane who’d never seen Earth, whose entire world was a settlement of prefab shelters and hydroponic farms and three overworked teachers.
That drawing would reach Earth in six days. The grandmother would open it on her handset and cry. She’d record a reply, send it back through the network, and in another six days the child would hear her voice, pixels and compressed audio carried across light-years because Nora had clicked a button and put it in a queue.
1,254 messages.
Tomorrow she’d be back at her console, sorting and routing, making sure the colonies stayed connected. It wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t exciting. Nobody would write songs about communications officers managing message queues.
Nora closed her eyes and tried to sleep, knowing that somewhere in the dark, transmissions were piling up, waiting for someone to make sure they reached the other side.
Someone had to keep the network running.
Relay Station Epsilon-7 processes an average of 1,300 transmissions daily, routing messages between Earth, lunar installations, and outer colonies. The station operates with a crew of eight, working in twelve-hour shifts, three hundred sixty-five days a year.
If you enjoyed this story, you can follow the main story arc in The Exodus Rush, the first book in The Vethrak Requiem series.