Naylon looked all around. Soaking wet, he was alone in the wilds of Rylerra. And he was a considerable distance from his original location. Perhaps even a full kilometer away. The sandbar was on a wide curve with a few boulders scattered here and there. The other bank was quite distant. At least ten if not fifteen meters away. He was having a difficult time focusing his thoughts and realized he might be in real trouble if he didn’t get warmed up soon. Just beyond the sandbar, where the bank was steep, creeping vines hung downward, seemingly trying to make their way to the water. Vines? He was unaware of vine-like plants on Rylerra. All of them were only two or three meters in length at their longest. Beyond that were short trees, or were they bushes? He simply didn’t know. He had been planning to familiarize himself more with the flora and scant fauna once they had set up their legitimate camp for the dig.
There would be no dig on this venture.
A narrow diameter log of bright orange wood had mired itself in the sand closer to shore. Orange? What a strange color for wood to be. He didn’t recall anything like orange wood on Rylerra. He crawled to the log and rested his back against it, facing the river. There, he caught his breath while holding his arms around his chest. His teeth were beginning to chatter. He had to figure out a way to get warmer and quickly.
The sun had warmed this patch of sand quite considerably he realized. There was no wind of any kind here. Naylon shed the backpack then his jacket and shirt. Bare-chested, he was able to at least able to take advantage of the warmth of the sunlight. He squeezed out his shirt and laid it on the log. He did the same for his jacket. Lastly, he shed his trousers and underwear. The humidity was quite low. He figured the items might dry out quite quickly.
Next was his backpack. In it he had a container of water, a few energy bars, the sensor gear, a small toilet kit bag, a change of socks (he totally forgot he’d put them in that compartment), and some other miscellaneous items. Everything was wet.
He returned to his trousers and started to wring them out. That’s when he remembered the disc-shaped object they’d picked up in the cavern. He reached in and pulled it out of his thigh pocket. He peered at it to discern what he could of it. That’s when he discovered tiny symbols written in a spiral pattern over its entire surface. He was sure he was staring at alien writing. The thought of such a discovery was incredibly exciting, even considering the circumstances.
At least the scientist part of him was excited. The rest of him was becoming quite fearful. He was weaponless, alone and still cold. He was far from where he needed to be to get back to the rest of the group, and there was no way he could reach them before nightfall. It was surely going to be very chilly tonight despite the reasonable temperature right now. Immediately, he tried the neural implant. ‘Darreth! Darreth! Can you hear me?’ Nothing. He tried again and again. Still nothing. If it didn’t work when they were in the cavern, it certainly wouldn’t have worked this far away. It was worth the try anyway and it boosted his morale for a while. But it faded quickly.
He was exhausted from having thrashed around in the water. He could barely hold his eyes open. He finished wringing his trousers and underwear out, then slowly put them both back on. It was difficult due to their being wet and him being exhausted. Maybe after a short nap he’d be able to figure out how to get across the river, if that’s indeed what he needed to do. Perhaps by that time his clothing would be dried out. His wet pants were just this side of tolerable. They would eventually dry out from the warmth of his body.
Naylon curled up in as much of a ball as he could. He rested his head on the backpack and shut his eyes. The warm sunlight felt comforting. Soon he fell asleep.
Tasker Ebit’s large yellow eyes had been following every move of the mysterious stranger on the sand below him. He had been just about to walk down to the river, hose in hand. His task was to place an end into the water then return to the ship and start the pump. He had gone not more than thirty meters when he saw something dragging itself up out of the river and onto the narrow beach. Immediately, he squatted down onto his belly, looking like a four-legged spider in such a position. He raised his head on his thin neck and peered out through the short vegetation.
Being an alien on this planet, as were his masters, he thought at first he was observing an aquatic native. Within a second, he was sure he saw nothing more mysterious than a Terran. But this Terran wasn’t part of his party. Although Tasker Ebit was unable to count as such, he knew everyone was accounted for, including the other Taskers.
This Terran was alone, too. Tasker Ebit was sure of that. He saw no others nearby. Carefully, he sniffed the air when a slight breeze made it his way. The Terran’s scent wasn’t on that one. He shifted his position slightly, crawling sideways very slowly, to align himself more with the shifting breezes. The wet Terran below him wouldn’t be aware of him unless he presented himself visually. But who was this one? How did he get here without his master’s ship? Was he a Telkan in disguise? No, all the Telkans he had ever seen were much larger and had thick grayish-black skin. This one was surely Terran. There. The breeze definitely told him this was a Terran. But the stranger smelled noticeably different from the ones on the ship.
It was time to report back to his masters about this mysterious arrival. This man might be a danger. The water he was supposed to filter could wait. He was sure this was more important.
Captain Rodigue Pacudas, leader of the band of nine handpicked men from his infiltration patrol, sat behind a wide table in his cabin. The cabin was inside the specially upgraded troop ship named Cortés Libre. They had landed on this planet a day and a half ago. The captain had already named it Déstica. It was an exhausting and stressful journey which had taken several weeks.
Their journey couldn’t be made through the use of the normal space routes. Telkan warships monitored the spacetime conduits that merged into Telkan space. In fact, there wasn’t a single known conduit that connected Terran and Telkan space that didn’t have a dense network of mines surrounding it. But the Telkans didn’t have a complete map of Terran space. Nor did they consider that Terrans might actually use a conduit connecting neutron stars.
Although spacetime conduits existed all over space, there were many of them that were far too hazardous to use. Those that terminated in systems with supergiant stars, giant stars, triple star systems, neutron stars and stars that had gone nova were always avoided due to the gravimetric shearing at the mouths of the conduits, the instability of the openings, and the severe radiation hazards inherent in such systems. Indeed all systems with a giant or supergiant star had conduits that opened within their coronospheres.
Several years previous, a recon team determined a neutron star in a triple star system in Terran-held space opened into a single neutron star system with a dense asteroid field in what was thought to be Telkan space. The end of the conduit on the other side was dangerously close to the star’s solid crust. Five probes had been sent through and only two retrieved. Both had provided telemetry proving the opening was indeed in Telkan space, that no comm traffic had been detected, and the conduit didn’t open too close to the neutron star’s radiation axes. If a way through could be found for a much larger vessel, the conduit might provide a strategic advantage.
Pacudas had volunteered for the mission. The Cortés Libre, normally a standard interstellar troop transport ship, was outfitted with eight radiation deflection systems instead of the normal two, along with specialized ablative and reflective shielding, and the latest armament. They were to provide a detailed map of the conduit at the far end, determine where the other conduits were in the system, then find out if any of them were being monitored. If they could traverse the system, they would be able to assess troop strengths in the systems they passed through, and discover if there were another way around the dangerous route. Few knew he and his team were on this mission. Everything in any database on the ship that could point to where they had come from and how they had arrived here had been carefully encrypted into a single h
olocube, which was hidden in Pacudas’ storage locker. Determining its significance would be essentially impossible if they were caught. A good deal of the technology being used on their ship was brand new. If successful, the shielding and the holocube technology would become standard on all interstellar ships.
The odds of their returning, or even having made it successfully through the asteroid field at the far end, had been calculated several times. None of the calculations predicted a success rate of greater than forty-three percent. But each one of them was up to the task. They knew if they succeeded, not only would they be heroes, the Empire would be in their debt. Indeed, a significant promotion would be in Pacudas’s future if they returned with enough data to change the course of the war. After all, the mission would put them deep behind enemy lines. It would be extremely hazardous, but any data they could provide would be intel that would be impossible to come by otherwise.
With engines at nearly full after exiting the conduit they sheared away with only two point three seconds to spare before gravimetric forces would have taken them to the star’s surface. They had sustained only minor damage to the outer hull, all of it because of the asteroid field they had ended up in. Getting clear of the field took three days. Once in relatively empty space and a full ninety degrees from the neutron star’s magnetic field, they were able to use the onboard conduit detection system to find another one thirty-nine hours away. Getting into it was cause for great concern. A tremendous amount of interference from the neutron star’s intense radiation field prevented opening the mouth of the conduit until the fourth try. Finally through, they continued on their journey to the second, third, then the fourth jumps. Not a hint of Telkan occupation had been detected until they reached this system.
Telkans used a very narrow band of comm frequencies, which the Terran fleet constantly monitored. When they reached this system, it was obvious there was a significant presence due to the amount of comm traffic. Discovering the least amount of comm traffic on this planet, and determining it was habitable, they landed. The captain dubbed the planet Déstica and decided it was time to not only perform some repairs, but also to access how heavily the rest of the system was occupied. Preliminary scans had told them this was a binary star system with at least two occupied planets, one orbiting each star in the system. And, he considered his men, who had been cooped up for far too long inside the small craft. He had morale to keep up. Once it had been determined no Telkans were in the immediate vicinity, he had given permission for the crewman to leave the ship in small groups but only for an hour at a time. His crew was grateful for any time at all because they understood the risk the Captain was taking on their behalf. At least the planet had a Terran-like atmosphere.
The war with the Telkan Ascendency had been waged for three decades. Long ago Pacudas had lost his brother and mother in a Telkan bombing raid. That raid had been in retribution for their own earlier raid on a Telkan colony world deemed dangerously close to Empire territory. It was well-known that Telkan technology was superior to their own, yet they lacked spirit, and thus had to be thoroughly provoked before they fought back.
It mattered not a bit to Captain Pacudas that diplomacy had not entered into the equation even after three decades of war. Against an enemy that refused to be conquered. But he wasn’t a diplomat. He was a soldier. Besides, it was unheard of for Terrans to hold diplomatic talks with a sworn enemy.
Captain Pacudas could trace his ancestry back well over fifteen hundred years. In fact, he could trace his lineage directly to the family of King Philip of Old España. It was a long and extremely proud history, filled with large families. In every generation since then, at least one able-bodied man had joined a military unit and fought for their country or planet.
Pacudas felt honored to be part of that family tree, one that had eventually helped take over most of Terra, expanded into space to colonize the Sol system, then eventually fifty-six exosolar worlds. He had relatives on seven of them, some holding important political positions, too.
But the easy pickings of inhabitable planets came to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the Telkan Ascendency lay at the edge of explored space. Since conquest had been in Terran blood for as long as recorded history, it was only natural Terrans would conquer what they considered interlopers in their expanding empire. An alien race simply couldn’t bring their expansion to an end, especially ones that existed so close to Terran-occupied worlds.
But the Telkans refused to be conquered. In fact, they seemed to be masters at hiding their strength and numbers, all of which seemed far greater than Terrans. It was even possible there were trillions of Telkans still not accounted for.
Much was known about Telkan physiology. They had six appendages, two of which were removed through a surgical procedure at birth. It was said they were vestigial legs, but no Terran had ever seen the limbs because no one had ever seen a live Telkan birth, much less analyzed a young one. They were very easily poisoned; tiny doses of fairly common compounds, which might cause a Terran minor irritation, could make a Telkan writhe in agony and bring on a painful death. That is, if one could pierce their incredibly tough hide. Although such compounds aided in interrogation, it had long since been discovered they never got any accurate intelligence that way.
Captain Pacudas had several display devices in front of him. One had a topographical map of their immediate area taken from imagery they shot before their descent from orbit. Another contained an inventory of the ship’s store, which proved they were running low on water. Another contained a complete personnel roster, including the Taskers assigned to them. Tasker Pas was an excellent cook. Tasker Ebit was incredibly strong and could work all day, if directed. Tasker Vak was used to keep the interior of the craft clean. It didn’t seem possible they had as much energy as they had, given how they were all thin as rails. But it was so.
A hologram of Captain Pacudas’ wife and his two sons were in the holocylinder to the right of the display devices on his desk. As he reached for another of the report flimsies, he scanned the holocylinder ever so briefly. It held a thirty-second loop of the three of them smiled out at him. The fighting and now this extremely dangerous reconnaissance were for them. One of these days he’d be with them permanently. They’d settle on a planet at the other end of Terran space. He already had his sights on Galea. It was far from any front line. But that was a thought for another day, he knew, as he continued to go over the displays.
The door chime sounded. It was Commander Jao Selaye. The commander wasn’t supposed to report for another hour. He pressed a button at the table and the door slid open.
“Captain,” the commander said as he came in and stood at attention in front of the captain’s desk.
“At ease.”
Selaye put himself at ease. “Sir, Tasker Ebit has reported something unusual. Something about a Terran on the river.”
“A what?”
“A Terran, sir. He’s quite adamant about it. I’ve checked and everyone’s accounted for.”
“Then he’s wrong.”
“Tasker Ebit is not given to excitement, sir.”
“Then see what it is. It’s probably an animal he’s mistaken for a Terran.”
“I’ll check into it myself, sir.”
The commander stepped backward one step, then turned around and exited the cabin. The door slid closed. He looked at Tasker Ebit, then turned to Lieutenant Navar, the leader of the soldat team, who had been waiting in the corridor. The lieutenant was in charge this shift, and thus in charge of whichever Taskers were awake.
Taskers were unable to speak. They had no speech center with which to do so. But they served their purpose. Nearly eight hundred years previous, when Terrans first went into space, slavery was the norm on Terra. Shortly thereafter, a social movement had been growing to do away with that trade. It was simple luck that one of the first earthlike planets Terrans settled had a large population of a semi-sentient species of simian-like creatures. They couldn’t be c
lassified as mammals, although people had a tendency to view them as such. In fact, they were oddly insect-like, more like spiders, what with their unusual stance on four legs. They mostly moved like that, but all could stand and walk erect. Their rubbery necks and large yellow eyes made them extremely odd-looking. But it was their docile nature, amazing dexterity, their near unlimited energy, and abundant numbers which instantly intrigued Terrans. By a happy coincidence, they became the replacement for human slaves. After all, that institution had existed since the beginning of time and it surely wasn’t going to end just because Terrans had conquered space travel.
At the same time the human slave trade on Earth was being dismantled, the Taskers on Ebórica 4 were being rounded up, implanted with cybernetics, and taught to understand human speech by way of RNA learning injections. Within four years, the techniques used to create a Tasker had been standardized. The serum used to teach them to understand Empire Spanish was patented with the name Pelinex. Taskers had been part of human culture just as human slaves had been in previous centuries. Kept in their place because of limited brainpower and the use of Pelinex, no Tasker had ever turned on its master. And none needed to either. They had become an invaluable part of life, were as common as cats and dogs, and were kept well-fed and healthy. The only drawback was that their planet’s natural rotation was much faster than Earth’s. Their days were only eighteen hours long, which made Tasker circadian rhythms totally different from a Terran’s. Nonetheless, Terrans had long ago gotten used to the fact that at regular intervals a Tasker would simply shut down in what appeared to be a narcoleptic state, which lasted up to five hours. Special sleeping chambers for Taskers were a common part of any household, business or military unit.
The Rylerran Gateway Page 16