“Stiff-necked pride,” said Jeneen. “Just because the Sumerians have been around forever, they think it’s impossible that a young race like ours could have something to offer!”
“Yeah, well, it’s not the first time we’ve come across this, is it,” said Andre.
“No, it’s not,” replied Celia, getting up with a more purposeful look on her face. “But we’re not going back to Earth completely empty handed. Andre, get the sensor array out and into position. While we’re allowed into this corner of Sumerian space, we can at least get some detailed data about the area.
“Put out the extreme range satellites too. I want to see what we can pick up from the Core. I’ll go and tell the Sumerians we’ll be working outside the station for a few days. We can make a new attempt to get access to some Rothii areas when we get back.”
Andre let out a mock groan. It was going to take him hours of precision work to put the sensor array into place, but at least it would feel better to be doing something useful.
“What’s the matter, old man, not up to it?” smiled Jeneen.
“Listen, squeak,” snorted Andre. “What I can’t do with precision equipment is not worth doing. When I get my hands on something it’s not long before it’s purring like a kitten!”
He looked up at her legs, crossed on a powerpak on the deck while she ran diagnostics from a monitor in her lap. She smiled, and tucked her legs back under her, out of sight.
Both of them had felt an attraction building for some time. There was a bit of an age gap, but so what. If you got romantically involved with someone from outside the area of Rothii artefacts, they never knew what you were talking about when you described your work. It had been something of a research team tradition to keep love affairs in-house.
Andre had been shy at first, but once she had shown him she was as interested as he was, he had taken to acting as a somewhat untrustworthy Robber Baron trying to seduce a ‘sweet young thing’.
At first she had thought it was funny, but lately she had begun to feel disturbingly thrilled at the way he was pretending to pursue her. Age gave him an advantage in games like these.
It took them ten days to get the sensor array out and the remote satellites into position. A lot of the problems were due to setting up the satellites at the extreme end of their operating range. Starships could travel many times the speed of light across deep space, but communications were still limited to the speed of light. The satellites were platforms for the collection of data, and they would be picked up using the Europa later.
Celia wanted to observe the Core, the centre of the galaxy where hydrogen clouds were thickest, and stars were born at a rate to put the rest of the galaxy to shame. Both Earth and Uruk, the Sumerian home planet, were well away from the Core, out in the Spiral Arm. The giant space station Ragnaroth was at the extreme edge of the territory explored by the Sumerians, and closest to the Core.
When the remote satellites were in place, Celia approached EusBrahmad again for access to some of the more interesting parts of the Rothii station. Sensing the dynamics between EusBrahmad and his Second, she worked on SarSanni first, and got him to accompany her when she went to see EusBrahmad.
It was quite a battle of wills when the meeting finally happened. Pushing her point as far as she dared, without triggering an interstellar incident, Celia reminded the EusBrahmad of his obligations under the recent Closer Cooperation Treaty (CCT).
SarSanni was caught in the middle, agreeing with Celia in principle but unable to disagree with his boss. The changes of skin colour and body movement by both Sumerians confirmed the mixture of embarrassment and anger they were experiencing. It would have been an alarming sight for someone who hadn’t worked with them before, but Celia had been through a lot of this over her research career.
Finally, she managed to win some minor concessions, and decided that was better than nothing. Her research team would be allowed to work in one of the peripheral medical bays.
SarSanni escorted her back to the designated Human quarters. He seemed apologetic, and Celia was not surprised at that quality in him. Par’Sanni were always the most reasonable of the Sumerians, actively looking forward, feeling the value of new discoveries might outweigh any disturbance to established systems.
Par’Brahmad, on the other hand, were titular heads, ritual leaders, whose power came from the established order, and who wanted to keep things the way they were. It was good sense for the Sumerians to put Par’Brahmad in charge of things, but to give the main operational power to the Par’Sanni, or Seconds as they were usually known.
SarSanni seemed more interested than most in Human activities. He could be a valuable friend in the future, if time permitted them the chance to know each other better.
She stopped and laughed to herself. Sumerians were always ‘he’ to the research team. It just seemed easier. None of them had any obviously female features. There had always been no way of telling which of the Sumerians were male, and which were female.
Perhaps leaders were always one particular sex, no one knew. The Sumerians were secretive enough with their technology and their civilisation, but gave away absolutely nothing about themselves or their culture.
CHAPTER 8
________________
While the others shifted equipment into a long, low room in the space station that was once a Rothii medical bay, Andre and Jeneen took the opportunity to shut down gravity-sum in the Europa and overhaul the star drive systems.
The conduits around the massive Orscantium decay chamber in the research ship were very tight to work in, crammed as they were into the aft of the ship. With the gravity-sum off, they were able to pull themselves along more easily, the equipment they needed trailing along behind them in cases they tied to their waists.
Andre was in a good mood. He kept up a stream of funny comments, and made the occasional ribald suggestion, as the two of them worked along opposing sides of the containment chamber. They met at last in a larger section in front of the main panel at the very back of the star drive section. They were both flushed with their efforts, and pleased with a good morning’s work.
“It would be nice to be back under gravity-sum,” said Jeneen, “now that we’ve got a bit more space. It gets tiring having to brace myself to pop a panel off when there’s no gravity.”
Andre pulled himself to a position on the other side of the section from her, and smiled. He tapped the remote in his pocket to reactivate the artificial gravity, and said, “you mean like this?” as he fell downward onto her.
She was initially amused by the deviousness, or was that the cleverness, of him. Then she took some time to be indignant at his cheek. Her thinking processes came to an abrupt stop when the warmth and weight of him flooded her senses.
He wriggled his arms around her, and she gave a small gasp. Then he was kissing her, and her body melted under him like it had a mind of its own.
It was not the perfect time to be doing this, she thought, but she wasn’t going to stop him. Nothing was ever perfect. All intimacy lies somewhere between a leisurely time of discovery and hurried moments grabbed when in a rush. She would think about it all later.
Andre was the picture of worried concern when she asked him to sit up for a moment, until she removed one of the scan meters that was digging into her back. She laughed at him, and told him to stop treating her like something that might break. She put her arms around him, and he followed her down as she lay back into the place they had already warmed with the heat of their bodies.
She suggested they get back to work a few long, very pleasant minutes later. She had made up her mind. The touch, the smell, the presence of him let her know it was not a matter of if, but when, they would dive deeper into the relationship. But such closeness needed more time, it needed to be comfortable and relaxed when it happened.
Some time later, a rather sheepish pair emerged onto the techdeck from the conduit system. Mortified that something about their clothes or colouring migh
t make them the butt of embarrassing jokes, Jeneen hurried to her quarters to restore some order to her appearance.
It wasn’t long before Jeneen simply found it too difficult to resist Andre’s advances. On one particular day they had finished their work and were talking about the recreation time they would have during the shipboard ‘evening’.
Jeneen found herself saying, “If you want to drop by later, I’ve got some pretty complicated servo-assist equipment that hasn’t been used for a while – maybe we could run it in or something.”
Only the nervous giggle and the blush across her cheeks alerted Andre that Jeneen was trying to sound clever and off-hand. His eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously, then began to bounce up and down. She burst out laughing and pushed him away.
“You are hopeless, you know that?” She said, turning and walking away.
“Quite hopeless, and quite predictable,” she continued. “I suppose someone has to take you off the streets and save the rest of the world from your insanity.”
“What?” said Andre, trotting along after her and waving his hands in the air. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t . . .” But he stopped talking as she turned and kissed him.
“One hour after evening rations, and don’t eat too much. You’ll spoil your, ah, dessert.”
Andre watched in amazement as she walked off. It slowly dawned on him that he’d been neatly manoeuvred into a place in Jeneen’s life. He walked off in the other direction with a pleased smile on his face.
The two of them got away with it for three weeks. Celia began to wonder why things needed fixing in the back end of the ship so much. Andre and Jeneen were becoming harder to find, particularly on the morning shift, and could be counted on to be somewhere deep in the maintenance conduits. Then Celia was watching them work the diagnostics on the techdeck one day, when Jeneen absentmindedly flicked stray hair off Andre’s ear, in the casual manner of the proprietary female.
Roberto walked past, and she beckoned him to the doorway. She put her fingers to her lips, not wanting to be heard over the hums and beeps of the machines, and pointed to the two at the diagnostic panels.
Roberto lifted his palms up, saying in effect ‘what do you want me to see?’ She leaned her head sideways on her hands and made a soft ‘ah’ sound. Roberto looked again.
Andrea and Jeneen were involved in an intense discussion about something on a readout screen. He closed his hand over hers, and quickly tapped on the command panel in several places using her fingers. They looked at the screen again. After a few moments Andre looked down at his hand, squeezed Jeneen’s fingers gently and went back to his work. Celia waved Roberto further along the corridor.
“How long has this been going on?” she said, with the hint of a smile.
“Don’t know,” said Roberto. “Now that you mention it, their behaviour has been a bit odd lately.”
“Well I wish they had let me know. Relationships are another variable in my planning for the Europa, and having to work around them as a couple won’t make decisions any easier.”
“You’re sure you didn’t know anything?” she said accusingly, looking up at Roberto.
“No. Not a thing,” he protested.
“Running this show isn’t always easy you know,” said Celia, looking down.
“Hey, you’ve done a great job since Creedo stepped down,” said Roberto softly, “and I know the others think so too.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” she said quietly, then looked up at him and cleared her throat. Finally she said, “we’ve only got four weeks left at Ragnaroth. We’ve got to make the best of that time.”
Roberto nodded.
“How is the analysis of the data we’ve picked up from the Rothii medical bay coming on?”
“Ah, I wanted to speak to you about that,” he said. “The data doesn’t make sense. The medical bay is definitely built by the Rothii, for Rothii to use, but the figures don’t stack up.
“For example, bone density seems to be a major part of the medical data, but what we’ve got doesn’t fit with the Sumerian idea that the Rothii were short, and basically round.
“From what I can see the biggest bones have very small cross-sections. I’m not sure we’ve got the scale right, but it would be like you or me having a thigh bone half as thick as it should be, and twice as long!” Celia’s eyes lit up.
“This is more like it!” she said. “Earth has been dying to know something about the Rothii, and this could be a real breakthrough.”
Their voices trailed off as they made their way down the corridor.
The new breakthroughs they were making on the Rothii medical data took all of their attention over the next few days. It was only on a routine bypass flight of the satellites, using a drone that Andre had sent out, that they began to suspect anything was wrong.
“Look at this,” said Andre to Roberto, who was in the Europa’s bridge doing some detailed work on the Rothii skeletal structure.
“What am I supposed to see?” said Roberto, walking over to the screen in front of Andre.
“That’s just it,” said Andre. “Remote satellites two and five are missing. The drone just came in, and these are its sensor readings.”
A three-dimensional representation of the star systems on the edge of the Galactic Core showed on the screen. The remaining satellites showed as pulsing dots, but two black circles indicated no detectable telemetry from two and five.
“Have you got the infra-red and low-frequency data up yet?” he called to Jeneen, who was partially hidden behind a panel she had opened to get access to the navigation console.
“It should be available in a few seconds,” she called back, and indeed, an orange bar appeared at the right-hand side of the screen. Andre adapted what was already on the screen to show information in the more reliable lower frequencies.
“Shows the same story,” he said. “It’s as if the sats have just vanished.”
“They could have fallen prey to meteorite damage, had some sort of malfunction, experienced a power loss, anything . . ,” said Roberto.
“No, no, no,” said Andre. “All of those things would have left a trace, a bit of debris, something for the drone to record.”
“Then it’s odd all right,” said Roberto. His eyes sharpened as he took in the information more fully.
“Why should it be the two closest to the Core?” he said finally.
Andre shrugged. The two of them stared at the screen, but no further insights were forthcoming. Later in the day Roberto was talking to Celia.
“Should we pick up the rest of the satellites?” he said.
“No, leave them out there,” she said. “They’re recording valuable information for us. There’s a bit of overlap in the sensor ranges anyway. I think we can get most of the data we want from the sats that are left.”
It wasn’t long before the rest of the crew were most fervently grateful for that decision.
CHAPTER 9
________________
Near the end of the following ‘sleep period’, when the ship’s lighting was muted and all systems were reduced to a minimum, the lights in Andre’s cubicle started to flash the universal emergency signal: one short red and two long yellow.
He took half a second to realise what was happening, and then he hit the floor running. The others arrived on the Europa’s bridge moments after him. Most had fumbled into some semblance of work outfits.
“It’s a pigeon,” said Andre, working quickly to find the cause of the alarm. Each of the satellites was fitted with an emergency ‘carrier pigeon’, the smallest possible star drive engine in a pod that was all crude mechanics and no extra weight.
None of them would have known why it was called a carrier pigeon. It was an archaic phrase from much earlier messaging, but the wording had stuck over the centuries.
A pigeon was launched only if the emergency program on the satellite concluded there was a high likelihood of its destruction in the immediate future
.
“It’s from number three satellite,” said Andre. “I’m running the data it was carrying now.” He stopped and made a thin whistling sound through his teeth.
“These are the readings just before the pigeon was released. There was some sort of massive energy fluctuation, and look at the plasma count. This looks like – I don’t know – the sort of discharge you’d get from a very small sun.”
Most of the sensors on the satellite had shut down when the strange new energy overloaded them. At the end of the data stream there was an unusual ionisation pattern. Celia looked enquiringly at Andre.
“I can’t figure that last bit out,” he said. “It doesn’t look like any sort of natural phenomena.”
Roberto fastened onto his words.
“So it could be unnatural,” he said. “I mean, it could be an organised signal of some sort. Or a weapon perhaps.”
“I suppose so,” replied Andre, hesitantly. “The pattern is very complex, and nature doesn’t do this sort of complex. Whatever it’s coming form, it is a signal of immense power.”
That was when the second pigeon came in. Andre looked up, startled, as the security system chimed. Then a second information display started up on his screen. Jeneen began the diagnostics as the data stream came on line.
“Which one is it this time,” said Celia, the tension of the situation building in her voice.
“Um, that pigeon came from number eleven,” said Andre. “One of the ring of satellites we put near anomalies, unusual radiation events further back from the core.”
“Put them on the navigation grid,” snapped Celia. Andre jumped.
“Hurry, man!” she yelled, and he closed off the data stream from the second pigeon as he called up the navigation systems.
“It’s a straight goddamn line,” swore Celia. “If it’s not coming at us, it’s going to pass very close by.”
“What, what’s coming by?” stammered Jeneen.
“How far is it, how far between them?” said Celia urgently.
“What?” said Andre, not altogether comprehending.
Invardii Series Boxset Page 23