The Sakkara

by Donald Nicklas

  Chapter 7 - Exploration

  The colonists were settling in but Slone needed some kind of resolution. The Saltic prisoner was still unconscious, at least as far as they could tell. The medical staff had no idea how he or she was doing. For convenience, they decided to call it a ‘he’ for now. After a rest period, Slone called a meeting of all the department heads along with Julia Hammond and Centurion Marshal. After all were seated and had refreshments, Slone began the meeting.

  “I have called you all here since we have to discuss where we are with the wormhole drive and where we are going from here. It is safe to say that the Saltic will send a ship to find out what happened to their vessel. From talking with some of the colonists, the Saltic would apparently stay several planetary rotations to participate in some ritual associated with the sacrifices. They have no idea if the wormhole was closed while they were here; in fact, they had no idea what a wormhole was. It is difficult to deal with people who have been frozen in time after losing their technology. None of our psychology techs has any idea who they actually think we are. Where are we on the Saltic wormhole drive we have aboard?”

  Since technically Diana Gardner was in charge of the analysis of the drive, she gave the status report. “Captain, we have continued to examine the drive and discovered a discrepancy between the drive we have and the one in the ship we destroyed. The ship on the planet has a drive with an extra panel that ours does not have. The problem is, given our ignorance of the technology, there is no way of knowing if the difference is just in the manufacturer or if it is key.”

  Slone then turned to Dr Tirpak, “Doctor, what can you tell me about the condition of our prisoner?”

  The Doctor reported on the status of her patient. “Captain, I have examined the alien with all of the equipment we have for both humans and serpents. The Saltic’s wounds appear to be healing but their anatomy is very primitive. From what I can gather, they are no stronger than we are but they must have a high level of intelligence. I cannot find anything I would call a brain, so their evolutionary path must have opted for a more diffuse nervous system. Their eyes are on stalks at the end of their body, which is the highest when they stand. We decided to call this end the head. Scans indicate that the visual connections spread diffusely through the body, again suggesting the brain is diffuse. As far as we can tell, the Saltic is still unconscious, but if he is faking unconsciousness, we would have no way of knowing.”

  “Ok keep at him, Doctor. Use the translator we took from the Saltic commander and attempt to determine if we can converse with him.” Slone now looked at the others in the room. “We have a larger problem than our Saltic captive. We can’t stay in this system for several reasons. First, we have limited supplies and the planet the colonists were on has no food. They were supplied by the Saltic and they did not realize they were eating their fellow humans they gave as sacrifices. Apparently, after the Saltic took the brain for their computers, they processed the body into food bricks for the colonists. Secondly, the Saltic will be back to check on their ship. As far as we can tell, the ship that came here was unarmed. That may not be the case with the next one.”

  At this point, the primary centurion of the third cohort, who was human, spoke up, “Captain Slone, can we take the slipstreams out of here?”

  Slone paused a second before he gave his response, “We could if we had any idea where they went. The problem is we have no slipstream charts of this part of the galaxy, so we have no idea where they lead and if there are any outbound streams at the destination. A slipstream could lead us to a system containing a black hole, which would prevent the formation of outbound slipstreams due to a lack of energy emissions. I would like to suggest a different approach which will be much more dangerous but may be possible with invisibility.”

  Now it was Alaya’s turn to look at her husband, “What are you planning?”

  “When the next wormhole opens there will be a slight lag before the Saltic ship comes out. We will go invisible and wait until the enemy is clear. We will then enter the wormhole and see where they are coming from.” Slone explained and then let that sink in. “If anyone has a better idea, I’m listening.”

  There was none so the discussion switched to logistics. The plan was actually simple and there was a need to discuss the wormhole transit. For the plan to work, the crew would need to recover from the wormhole as soon as possible. From the previous passage it was discovered that the serpents were less affected than the humans were; however, they were affected, some more than others. Since invisibility was critical for the plan to work, it was decided to put three serpents on the invisibility console in the hopes that one stays unaffected. To increase the odds, three who passed through the previous wormhole with little or no affect would be chosen. As luck would have it, Hister was one of them.

  Once this part of the plan was taken care of, Slone brought up the other problem. “Once we pass through the wormhole, we have to close it and make sure the ship does not return through it to tell what happened here. Any ideas?”

  Centurion Marshal said, matter-of-factly, “We have to destroy the ship to close the wormhole.”

  “I agree,” Slone said. “The problem is how do we move through the wormhole and destroy the ship to close it at the same time?”

  Roger Umgabe spoke up. “If we fire a missile before we enter the wormhole, we should pass through before it reaches the enemy.”

  “Roger, that would work if we could be sure the missile would hit and not be taken out. Once we enter the wormhole, we have no control over the missile or can do a follow up if it is taken out.”

  The group was not sure how to handle that situation. Just then, Dr. Tirpak’s communicator beeped and Slone nodded for her to answer it.

  “Dr. Tirpak here, I am at a meeting.”

  A voice at the other end, “Doctor, sorry for interrupting but you wanted us to call if there was any change with the Saltic prisoner. All indications suggest that the prisoner has died, unless they have some kind of suspended animation ability.”

  “Ok, put the body in the cooler for later autopsy.”

  “Belay that order,” Slone said and the Doctor did so.

  Everyone at the table looked at Slone and he looked at the Doctor, “Doctor,” Slone began, “do we have data on the normal temperature of the Saltic and do you think you could work with Commander Gardner to make a stasis chamber send out readings suggesting the Saltic inside is still alive?”

  Dr. Tirpak considered a second and then replied, “I have the data we need to make a chamber transmit the proper vitals based on what an injured Saltic would read.”

  “Excellent, Doctor, here is what I have in mind.”

  Slone spent the next hour laying out his plan and discussing the pros and cons as well as the logistics of carrying it out. When the meeting broke up, Diana Gardner and Doctor Kata Tirpak went down to the sickbay and modified the stasis chamber. While they were doing this, Roger Umgabe went with some weapons techs to get a missile warhead for the other part of the plan. After three hours of work, all was ready and now there was only the wait time until the Saltic return. Slone wanted everyone aboard the battleship to be as rested as possible. To do that he ordered a minimal watch with the command crews aware that as soon as the ship detected a developing wormhole they call battle stations. The serpents on the invisibility console were also rotated, since Slone wanted the ship to remain invisible at all costs. As it turned out, they still had to wait another day and a half.

  The primary bridge crew was on the bridge when Roger Umgabe reported the energy signature of an opening wormhole just appeared in the middle of the system. Slone called down to sickbay and notified them to take the stasis chamber containing the Saltic to the hanger deck and just push it out of the force field. As they were doing this, a Saltic ship came out of the wormhole. As soon as the stasis chamber was clear of the ship, Slone ordered the Tempestas ahead slow and moved towards the wormhole and away from the stasis chamber. As the Saltic ship
drew closer to the battleship, Slone ordered the engines cut and they drifted past the alien vessel. This one was slightly larger than the first one and appeared to have some projections along the sides and the ends suggestive of weapon emplacements. Slone knew from his encounter in Andromeda that the Saltic used energy weapons. When they were within a hundred kilometers of the entrance of the wormhole, Slone ordered a full stop and waited. He was gratified to see the Saltic ship turn towards the location of the stasis chamber. Now it was only a matter of waiting and hoping they would take the bait. If they were as curious as humans were, they would.

  The Saltic ship came out of the wormhole into the Heimat system. They had been sent to determine if there was a problem with the ship sent before. In the eight centuries the Saltic had been farming the humans, they had lost ships before to mechanical failure. They may be advanced in technology, but even the best machines sometimes failed. Usually they found the ship stranded on the planet with the human colony or adrift in the system. Only once did the ship fall from the atmosphere of the planet and crash into the side of a mountain with the loss of all aboard. Once they were in the system, the Saltic captain asked for a sensor report. The sensor tech responded in their peculiar clicking and squeaking language, “Captain, there is no trance of telemetry from our ship but there is a capsule of some kind not far from here emitting a steady beep.”

  “Any idea what it is?”

  “No sir.”

  The captain looked over to the navigator, “Helm, take us to the source of the beeping.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The ship changed course and moved in the direction of the stasis chamber. As they approached, the holographic projection of the forward view of the ship showed an odd cylinder which was not of Saltic design. “All stop.”

  The ship came to a stop a short distance from the cylinder. The Saltic captain glided over to the projection and examined it in minute detail. The hologram projected exactly what it saw and through the transparent top of the chamber, the captain could see that it contained a Saltic. The captain returned to his recliner and called down to the ground troops aboard. “Major, take a shuttle and bring the cylinder aboard.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The Saltic Major delegated such a menial job to two privates who got into a small, shuttle in the Saltic favored rectangular, cuboid shape, and flew out of the hangar to the cylinder. When they were next to the cylinder, they could see that it was not of Saltic origin yet there was a Saltic inside. As ordered, they put on vacuum suits and left the shuttle to retrieve the cylinder. After it was aboard, they returned to their ship. When they landed aboard the larger vessel, the Saltic medics looked at the cylinder and could see that it was a medical cylinder of unknown origin, but it was giving readouts of what appeared to be vital signs. They moved the cylinder to the sickbay. Unknown to them, shortly after the cylinder was brought aboard the main ship, a one-minute countdown started deep in the bowels of the cylinder electronics.

  Slone and the bridge crew watched as the Saltic ship moved to the stasis chamber and stopped. The Tempestas was sitting just outside the horizon of the wormhole watching the activity projected on to the front of the sealed bridge bubble. Slone had the bridge sealed with its armor as a precaution. They watched with interest as the ship launched a shuttle to retrieve the chamber. So far, things were working as hoped. The shuttle retrieved the chamber and took it aboard the ship. The Romani had placed a small camera in the control panel. This camera transmitted an image they could project onto the front of the bridge. They watched with interest as the chamber was examined; when it entered the ship, it was then taken deeper into the craft. The deeper they took it, the less chance they could get rid of it. Once the chamber was well into the ship and while they were still moving it, Slone ordered the ship to enter the wormhole while he told Roger Umgabe to press the button to activate the small, nuclear warhead they had removed from a nuclear missile they carried for bombardment. They entered the wormhole with the usual visual distortion and screeching noise in their ears. Slone could feel the nausea coming over him and hoped he would not vomit. The passage through the wormhole was instantaneous. The timer on the warhead was set for a one-minute countdown to detonation. The Tempestas shot out of the other end of the wormhole and fifteen seconds later, the timer hit zero and the small, nuclear warhead detonated. This resulted in the total disappearance of the Saltic ship.

  “Captain,” Roger Umgabe said, “the wormhole has closed.”

  “Excellent, then our ruse worked. Drop the bridge armor and give me a rundown of this system. Paul, see if we are still in our galaxy.”

  As the armor went down, they could see that the wormhole let them out near the fourth planet of a single star planetary system. The star was a main sequence spectral class F white star. Since the star was slightly hotter than Earth’s Sun, the fourth planet was in the goldilocks zone. Of the five planets in the system, the fourth had an atmosphere and visible water with clouds. Scanning showed a large biomass and emissions suggesting habitation. Of the other planets, three were dead rocks, all closer to the star than the fourth planet. The last planet was in a distant orbit and consisted of a very large, gas giant bordering on a brown dwarf.

  “Full scans are coming in on the fourth planet. It is inhabited and there are five ships in orbit above an area of habitation,” Roger Umgabe. “They are all Saltic ships and they are small.”

  When Roger was finished, Slone then turned to navigation, “Paul, any idea where we are now?”

  “We are still in our galaxy. Actually we are not very far from our previous location, but still on the other side of the galaxy.”

  “Alright then, we have got to find out how our wormhole drive works and get out of here. Put us into orbit around the fifth planet and set the ship to rest. Keep us invisible. I need to talk with some of our guests,” Slone said and left the bridge, along with Captain Shegai. Alaya decided to check on the children and see how they weathered the wormhole transit.

  Christopher went down to where the wormhole drive was located and saw that Julia Hammond and Diana Gardner were hard at work doing mathematical calculations. Slone went over and asked how the research was going.

  With a great deal of frustration in her voice, Diana said, “It is going nowhere. This is the most infuriating thing I have ever dealt with. Every time I think we may have made a breakthrough nothing happens. I would be happy if we only got it to open a wormhole, but we’re getting nothing.

  Julia Hammond came out from behind the drive in the Sakkara shaking her head. “I just don’t understand it. It’s almost as if this drive was meant for one purpose only, to send ships to the other system. There is no way we can reset the system so there is no way we can input any coordinates. I think it may be incomplete.”

  “That would be a problem,” Slone said. “If the drive is incomplete then we cannot use it to get back home.”

  “Then if we are to get back home, we will have to commandeer one of those ships in orbit,” Captain Arabella Shegai said.

  Everyone around the Sakkara looked at Arabella with obvious disbelief on his or her face. “How are you planning to commandeer one of their ships?” Diana asked.

  “I would like to know that as well,” Slone said.

  “Captain, we in the intelligence division have been trained how to commandeer human ships if needed. Sometimes a spy needs to escape quickly. I just don’t know if it would work on a Saltic ship. We would also have to capture a live Saltic to question about how the drive works and the ship is controlled.”

  “Captain Shegai, what you are proposing is a tall order. I have no doubt we could take over one of their ships by boarding it, but that still leaves the other four ships. How do you suggest we deal with them?”

  “We will have to destroy them. I never said it would be easy.”

  “Ok, so destroy four ships and capture one with minimal damage to the Tempestas. You don’t expect much, Captain Shegai, now do you?” Slone touched the coml
ink in his ear. “Paul, how long until we are in orbit around the fifth planet?”

  “Five hours and 20 minutes.”

  “Tom, notify all department heads and military personnel to come to the conference room for a meeting when we reach orbit.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Slone left the flight deck and went to his quarters after notifying the bridge only to call him if it was an emergency. His wife came in to join him and reported the children came through the wormhole with only some vomiting.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Slone said to her. “Hon, Captain Shegai thinks we should capture a Saltic ship and destroy the other four in orbit. That way we could capture an intact wormhole drive and use that to get back.”

  “Very ambitious of her. Do you think it’s possible?”

  “I think if we sneak up on them invisible and hit them with massive broadsides, but I’m not even sure if our cannons can penetrate their hulls and I will not know until we attack. We may have to use nuclear missiles, if it comes to that.” Slone called down to the flight deck. “Commander Gardner, how many nuclear missiles do we have aboard?”

  The amount of nuclear missiles varies. Since they were almost never used, they were constantly rotated back to supply bases for overhauls and updates. As chief engineer, Diana Gardner was also responsible for ordinance, since in the Romani system that falls under the engineering department. “Since we used one on the Saltic ship by rigging the stasis chamber, we have a total of 7 left.”

  “Have them readied to load into the forward missile tubes if we need them.”

  “Yes, sir. Setting the techs on that now.”

  Slone closed the line and looked over to his wife, “We’re in quite a pickle here and we have few options on how to deal with it. If we don’t find a way back, we’re going to have to form our own colony out here and I don’t plan to do that. I won’t have the Saltic feed us our friends back.”