RAEFF (Jim Able: Offworld Book 6)

by Ed Charlton

  Jim Able: Offworld

  Episode Six

  RAEFF

  Ed Charlton

  Copyright

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  Jim Able: Offworld Raeff

  © 2021 Ed Charlton

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-935751-55-7

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  RAEFF

  ***

  Previously

  Jim and Tella have been commissioned by the galaxy’s gourmet spaceship manufacturer, the Praestans Rapax, to investigate a potential interplanetary war. Their first task is to interview a Gul—an alien with doglike features—secreted away in a base hidden in an asteroid field. The investigators have no clue who they are to meet.

  ***

  Footsteps returned to the corridor outside. A lone canid threw open the door, glanced around the room, and with quick and certain movements went straight to the bench opposite Jim.

  It walked upright, though slightly stooped, and was about as tall as Tella, with arms longer than a human’s. Tufted triangular ears framed its head. A foot-long snout thrust out under large black eyes.

  Jim took in the alien’s features as he controlled his initial alarm, keeping as calm and authoritative a demeanor as he could.

  It was dressed in simple gray coveralls and showed no discernable tail. The fur on its hands and head was jet black with streaks of gray and white. The mouth was open in what seemed, to Jim, like a sneer. The nostrils were flared and wet. Jim tried not to stare as it squatted on the bench, its knees on either side of its elbows. The tightness of its coveralls left no doubt that it was male.

  He thrust his snout over the table toward Jim and spoke in strong, clear Standard, pointing directly at Tella. “I don’t know what sort of game this is, monkey, but you start by wiping your snot off that wall!”

  Chapter One

  “Remove it!”

  The canid nodded his head toward Tella without looking away from Jim’s face.

  “You can see it?” asked Jim, his eyes wide in alarm.

  The canid rolled his tongue along the left side of his mouth and spat on the table.

  “Remove it! What do you think I am that you play these games? You and your feeble eyes may be fooled by it, but not I.”

  Jim recovered his composure and said, “Please, be calm. This is a simple misunderstanding. Let me explain.” He held up his hands in a gesture of placation while he thought quickly how he might recover. “Tella, please get dressed and sit with us. And you, please, tell me your name.”

  “You speak with Ernot Dirl Marhan.”

  “And may I call you Marhan?”

  The canid nodded once.

  “Marhan,” Jim continued as he wrote the name on his record pad, “this is the way...we normally work. I ask the questions, and Tella listens. Now, many people are not easy with Neraffans...”

  The canid spat again, this time toward Tella.

  “Perhaps, such as yourself. We feel it...better...if we avoid addressing the issue at all. Had we known you could see it—feeling as you do—I would have simply had it sit with us at the start. I apologize if we have given offense.”

  The canid laughed, a deep and powerful growl. “Have it sit where I cannot see it.”

  Tella, now pale white in its robe, picked up a chair and sat where it could see Jim, but just behind their visitor, at what it guessed would be the edge of his vision.

  “Now, who are you and where are you from?” demanded Marhan.

  “I am James Able, from Sol Earth.”

  “Sol Earth? Yes, I’ve heard of it. Just what the galaxy needed—another troupe of balding monkeys!”

  Marhan gestured with a snap of his jaws and a slight bark. Jim was not sure what the gesture meant, but assumed it to be an underlining of the challenge in his words.

  “And you are...,” Jim peered theatrically at his record pad, “...Ernot Dirl Marhan from...?”

  Marhan frowned. “Tanna Gul, of course.”

  “And you are currently the guest of the Praestans Rapax?”

  Marhan made no reply except to stare at Jim, his ears flattening slightly.

  Jim waited, counting silently to ten. “This conversation will pass more quickly when I ask and you reply.”

  They stared at each other for what seemed a dangerously long time.

  “Yes, yes! What...you think you speak to the wrong person?”

  “I care about the facts, Marhan.”

  “You play puppy games!”

  Jim glanced at Tella. “I would like us to proceed as if the Praestans Rapax have told us nothing. I want to hear it all from you—from your point of view. Is that okay?”

  “You waste my time.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  Marhan bared his teeth.

  “What did you do for a living on Tanna Gul?”

  “A living? It is my honor to build the spacecraft of our government’s forces.”

  With another glance at Tella, Jim asked, “Warships?”

  “Of course. The greatest fleet we have ever seen.”

  “What was your role in the construction?”

  “What?”

  “What was your role? What did you do? In what way does Ernot Dirl Marhan ‘build’ a fleet?”

  Marhan’s eyes narrowed and he licked under his nose.

  “This is not the question you came to ask. It is the plans you need to know about. This is why you are here.”

  “Indeed? I’ll be the judge of that, if you don’t mind.”

  Jim knew he was onto something and that patience was all he needed. Unfortunately, the canid had irritated him so thoroughly that he was struggling to hold his voice steady. He was still hot with embarrassment that Tella’s presence had been so easily discovered.

  “The plans we will come back to. I’d like to know about you and your role.”

  “No, the plans are everything—the beginning and the end. The Praestans Rapax have no honor! They lie! They lie to me; they probably lie to you; they lie in their plans. But I...I have found it! I have found them out! It is I who saw through their deceit. Cunning they may be—but it is I who have found out their strategy.”

  Marhan took a breath. Jim took the opportunity to interrupt.

  “You are, I’m sure, a highly skilled and intelligent person. I want to hear about the plans. I want first to understand how you use your skills in the activities of building your fleet.”

  “I...,” Marhan began, turning his head to look at Jim with only his right eye, “controlled the quality of the craft.”

  Jim nodded.

  “In what way did you control quality?”

  Marhan shifted on his bench.

  “I found the flaw.”

  “You were part of the QA organization.”

  “I found it. I found their hidden flaw.”

  “In the course of your duties as part of the QA organization, you found a flaw. Was that a mistake in the plans? Are you suggesting that the Praestans Rapax make mistakes?”

  Marhan snapped his jaws again. “Of course not. They don’t splash when they piss! The flaw is carefully inserted, deliberately drawn into those plans. They lie! They are beneath contempt. I went, and I bargained my silence with them. My silence—and they do what I want. My silence against their precious reputation! I have them shaking in my paws!”

  He held up a paw, and Jim noticed the long opposable thumb. It was rooted farther back from the other fingers than the thumb on a human’s hand. He also noticed
the retractable claws that he realized would make a physical encounter with this creature extremely dangerous.

  “Okay, what flaw, Marhan?”

  Marhan waited and smiled, his teeth showing yellow at their roots.

  “Now you ask. I know the weight, the mass, the position of every part in every craft. I, Ernot Dirl Marhan, knew they had lied. They had...agh! What does a scribbler like you know of such skills!”

  “Weight control? You calculate the craft’s center of gravity, the point about which it will pitch and spin.”

  Ernot Dirl Marhan blinked and said softly, “Yes.”

  Jim continued, “The finished craft’s center of gravity didn’t match the one marked in the plan?”

  “Subtle, very subtle—less than a claw’s end.”

  Jim looked at him without speaking and without glancing at Tella. If he had caught Tella’s eye, he would have started to grin, or worse, to laugh out loud.

  Jim steadied himself and continued as before. “Your role in the QA organization was to verify the center of gravity for each craft?”

  Marhan nodded.

  “And you reported the discrepancy to your superiors?”

  Marhan spat again but said nothing.

  “...who ignored you.” Jim wrote on his pad and waited to see if Marhan had anything to add.

  “You then pursued the problem until...what? Did they throw you out?”

  “No, Earth-monkey, my name will not be attached to the deaths of a thousand crews. My superiors stain their own families with blood! I pursued the problem to its source. For my silence about their ways, the Praestans Rapax are to give me access to communications media, to weapons, to whatever I need. When the fleet is defeated, I will lead my people!”

  In the short silence that followed, Tella quietly said, “You would leave your pack in the hope of leading all packs. It is a noble ambition.”

  “Your opinion means nothing to me,” he replied without turning.

  But both Tella and Jim could see from his posture that the compliment meant a great deal to him.

  “So, the flaw, the flaw you found, the flaw that pushed off the COG by so little, what was it? Why should the Rapaxans care if anyone knows about it?”

  “You still pretend they have not told you of this? Very well. The craft are silent. This can only happen if every movement, every vibration, every torque is dampened, suppressed, covered, or bled off. To do that through an entire construction eventually means you back yourself into a corner. Somewhere, the stresses and vibrations that are not being felt elsewhere have to come out. They show eventually—somewhere. The designs are clever. Hah! But there is one point—perhaps that is the genius of it, that it is only one point—that the energy is filtered and directed toward. This is the corner they backed themselves into. This is what I found. They insert a dense honeycomb, lined with a material that can absorb and eventually dissipate the combined energy diverted from the other parts of the craft—an energy sink. And where do the scum hide this sink? Do they conceal this weakness in their design? No, they advertise it. Their arrogance knows no limit! They place their maker’s mark—the name plaque—over it for all to see! They flaunt their own weaknesses in the faces of their customers!”

  “How is this a flaw?” asked Jim quietly, scared to break the flow of information.

  “You don’t know because you are an ignorant monkey! You know little of such skills as mine. I found it. I saw it there in the plans. There they say how big, how dense, what material it is to be made from. They lie; they trick. If you make it so, do you know what will happen? Do you understand anything?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Within an hour of flight, it will melt. It is too light, too weak! But they have placed it so that when it melts, it will be like a cork from a bottle. ‘Pop,’ James Able from Sol Earth, catastrophic decompression.” Marhan lunged forward, his claws gouging the tabletop, the bench toppling behind him. His snout was inches from Jim’s face, his breath hot and sour.

  “All the crews, all the fleet...death! Death and death again!”

  Jim remained still and silent, aware from Tella’s remark the importance for Marhan of pack loyalty. The pain of leaving the crews to their fate perhaps accounted for some of his bluster.

  “So, the plans indicated a close-to-correct, but weakened, sink. It was enough only to put the COG out slightly,” Jim finally said, keeping his voice quiet so as not to add to Marhan’s emotion.

  Marhan nodded and turned back to the bench and righted it. “Subtle, like all good lies. Close to the truth.”

  “And they wouldn’t listen to you. That’s...” Jim shook his head.

  “Don’t waste any pity on us. We do not need it. You now have heard my tale.”

  “Thank you.”

  Marhan growled quietly. Behind him, Tella gestured to Jim that they should adjourn outside.

  “Please wait here while I consult with my colleague,” said Jim.

  “Why?”

  “I wish to decide...how best to make use of...your skills and knowledge, Marhan. Please give us a few moments.”

  Marhan turned over his paw and began to lick fragments of tabletop from his claws.

  In the corridor outside, Jim and Tella spoke in low whispers.

  “He ‘builds a fleet of warships.’” Jim shook his head. “He’s a jumped-up weight control clerk!”

  “He fights his people’s enemies with a calculator,” Tella laughed.

  “Talk about delusions of grandeur!”

  “With the Praestans Rapax to back a revolution, it may be justified. But it is a long way up to savior from clerk.”

  “I don’t like to wish someone as obnoxious as him on any race.”

  “We need to find out who is the target of this war fleet.”

  “Do you think the PR really want to prevent a war? It sounds like they have it all under control. The fleet’s a dud, they’ll all ‘pop’ like he says, and that’ll be that.”

  Tella shook its head. “That cannot be all they want. They care about their plans. They perhaps care that no one finds out how they have spiked them.”

  “How did this pack get the plans in the first place? It’s incredible!”

  “Obviously, they had someone steal them. It takes a particular mind to dare to steal from a Rapaxan and a peculiar talent to succeed. No doubt the Rapaxans themselves are working to discover how it could have happened; it must be the first security breach they have ever had. Perhaps they would like us to get the plans back?”

  “How can we go on with this if they don’t tell us specifically what we’re meant to do?”

  Tella grinned. “You’re R546; you work it out!”

  “Bastard.”

  They went back in to Ernot Dirl Marhan.

  “Marhan, there are two questions. First, how did your people get the plans? Second, how do we prevent this loss of life?”

  The Gul sneered at Jim. “Fool. The Praestans Rapax have only one question: how do they cover up their embarrassment? They are naked, and their penises shrivel in the cold!”

  “Go on.”

  “They want all copies of their plans destroyed; they want the fleet destroyed; they want all who know their secrets paid off or...”

  “Destroyed.”

  His long snout slowly nodded as Marhan watched the signs of recognition of their mutual danger spread across the Earthling’s face.

  Tella stirred in its chair. “When the Rapaxans put you in power, you will be able to purge any of your people who know these things.”

  Still not turning to acknowledge Tella, Marhan replied, “The Rapaxans will not be seen to do anything themselves. I had not heard that they use Earth-monkeys or snot-people, but it is no real surprise.”

  Jim ignored the insults and asked, “What exactly did they tell you about us?”

&
nbsp; Marhan’s triangular ears lifted, and his nostrils widened. He did not reply immediately.

  “They referred to you as an ‘investigator.’ Those who deal in lies have difficulty recognizing the truth. They must ‘validate’ my information.”

  “What do you hope comes of our visit?”

  “That you move quickly. Do what you must. Do it soon. My people will need me, and I must be ready. I should have been gathering my support around me. They promised me long-range broadcasting equipment, but they delay for you. If you take too long, too many lives will be lost. My planet has been at war for four generations. This Gul-Raeff, who leads us now, has earned supremacy. We have a chance of peace, but he has surrounded himself with incompetents. If I am not ready to take over when the fleet fails, my planet will sink into chaos. The lies of your Rapaxan masters have destroyed his chance to bring us all out of the depths. I must be ready. Only I know the truth, and I...must wait on you.”

  Marhan twitched his head as he sneered to include both Jim and Tella.

  “Do all your people speak Standard?” Jim asked.

  “Of course. How else would we understand your whoops and babblings?”

  “Who is the fleet aimed at?”

  “Do you know nothing at all? Tanna’s second planet—Tanna Jorr! Their forces are the one last enemy that unites us. The Gul-Raeff has shown us our future. They stand in our way.”

  “You’re going to attack your neighbors? It breaks the primary law!”

  “You judge in ignorance. Our future is joined with the Jorrs, literally: we must breed with them. Theirs is the planet our races will re-emerge from. My people are on the brink of extinction. Our world is spoiled. We have no choice and little time; chaos will swallow us if we fail. The Gul-Raeff has mated with a Jorr bitch. Our word ‘raeff’ means prophet. This is his vision. This is how he leads us. This is the task I will take up. If their resistance prevails, it is at our expense. That your masters should interfere with such a task is intolerable. That I should delay action—waiting on a monkey—agh! Such a joke!”

  Jim saw that Tella had its face in its hands but could not tell what his colleague was thinking.