“Excuse me.”
Frederika turned to look at the girl who spoke to Ch'Kran. Sabina, a Cuban girl who like the majority of the women headed for Vanguard was a brunette with long curly black hair, not to mention a well developed chest and creamy olive complexion. It seemed Sharr preferred brunettes and Frederika was one of the few exceptions.
“Yes, Sabina?” Ch'Kran asked. Nothing escaped the male's attention. He made it a point to memorize each girl's name.
“What exactly is Sharr’s, Hawk's proper form of address? You have called him by a number of titles. 'Khan', 'Padishah', and ‘Shotar’,” Sabina asked. “Which title do we use and how do we address him?”
A grin curved his lips. Matters of protocol were things he enjoyed to discuss. “Shotar is my Lord Sharr's proper, inherited title. It means 'Star-King'. Khan becomes part of our crowned ruler's proper name. It is appropriate to call him Sharr Khan or Hawk as he wills it. You may also use the title 'Drak' -- Lord if the need arises.”
“And Padishah?” Sabina pressed.
“Padishah is used as an honorific for formal introductions.”
She bowed slightly. “Thank you.”
Mia giggled at a story Frederika had told her when the shadow of Ch'Kran loomed over their table. The two girls slowly glanced up at the Falcanian. Mia noticeably shrunk in her spot.
“Yes Ch'Kran?” Frederika asked. Her tone was slightly one of challenge as she looked up at the Falcanian who lorded himself over them.
The Falcanian once more grinned. “I simply wished to see if you were enjoying your meal, my Ch'Rahli-Valka.”
“I am, we both are.” Frederika took a sip from her steaming tea. “The chef is a master of his art.”
“Good.” He nodded at them and left the women to their meal.
“'Radiant Falcon',” Mia remarked after Ch'Kran had gone. “He offers you a great compliment. Ch'Rahli-Valka is a term of endearment that Falcanian noblemen only ever apply to a favorite wife, prized concubine, or their first born daughters. It is not given lightly to an outsider.”
[Unknown Space: Ten Minutes To Twelve, Falcanian Standard Time]
“What was that?” Trajan demanded.
The sensor officer checked his scanners and discovered a blip which had just begun to fade away out of sensor range. No doubt because of quick thinking on the part of the Falcanian crew which had pulled their vessel further out of scope of the advanced DSV Excalibur.
“It's gone.”
“Widen the scan!” Trajan ordered. “Captain Braden, I believe we have a shadow.”
The Captain nodded and ordered his weapons officer to ready the armaments.
“Locking on,” the sensor officer said. Each scanner had been calibrated to find the faintest reading in the dim reaches of space. “A silhouette is coming up.”
Trajan stood over the monitor, intently watched as the computer checked its records for a match to the silhouette which the sensors now targeted. At last, an oval shaped ship with wings came up on the screen. Its outline was familiar to the Centurion for he had seen such vessels streak across the red skies of Mars. “A Falcanian FS-9 Raptor!” Trajan shouted. He moved across the bridge to Braden in his command chair. “Close in! Destroy them!”
Braden pressed a button on his chair to give an order for his gunners to close in on the FS-9 Raptor.
Thrust control rockets flipped the vessel over and rotated the FS-9 Raptor so it could face off against the DSV Excalibur that had just charged her defense grid for battle and began to move forward onto the Tair’Aliran’s position.
“Gunports open!” shouted Kulcarin. “Lock and load all railguns.”
“Weapons hot, sir.”
Kulcarin ordered his men to alert. The bridge lights changed to a green hue. He felt the distance between his ship and that of the Imperium’s shrink. Each vessel moved at its maximum velocity. The expanse between them reduced in distance, yet it appeared as if the vessels gracefully glided at a slow pace to meet each other in combat.
The FS-9 Raptor was faster and more maneuverable. Sitara had designed a magnificent vessel. This became very apparent when the DSV Excalibur rotated itself toward the Tair'Aliran. The Imperium ship fired its maneuvering rockets. Closer and closer the ships moved as they reached weapons range. Kulcarin looked at his tactical display, and waited for the two spheres that showed the expanse of both ships weaponry to join and give his order to open fire.
The Falcanian noticed a small silver-white point on the holoviewer as he looked at the Excalibur move in toward them. It seemed to flash and then blink in and out of sight. Thinking it was a far off pulsar, Kulcarin turned his attention fully back on the enemy ships which plunged toward them.
“We are getting strange readings, Bashir,” Shierak said.
“The Excalibur?” Kulcarin asked.
“No. Off our starboard bow.” The Falcanian commander heard the apprehension in Shierak’s voice. “A building energy spike.”
“H’kilos!” cursed Aranskrai. His instincts aflame, Kulcarin jumped out of his command throne to shout his next orders. “Evasive! Break course, bring us about at full burn.”
On board the DSV Excalibur Captain Braden and his Imperial minder assumed that they had chosen to flee rather than fight a superior warship.
Space rendered itself and became a chaotic whirlpool filled with lightning, a chaotic discharge of energy. A vortex that emitted all the colors of the rainbow and some that no human eye could see exploded into fullness. The surge of the wormhole blinded the sensors on both the DSV Excalibur and Tair'Aliran.
“All systems back online and functioning normally,” Gee LaSalle said just as the lights came back up. “No damage to report.”
“The FS-9, do you see it?” Cole asked.
“No, sir. We should send out a scout.”
“Either they were swallowed by that thing or destroyed in the event horizon.” Trajan scowled. “We have more important things to attend to then stellar phenomena.”
LaSalle glared at Trajan. “I would think you wouldn’t want them to follow us any further, Centurion.”
“No debris or even a trace of an explosion,” the sensor officer added.
“We do not have the time to investigate,” Trajan snapped.
Braden's better judgment would have been to do a sweep, and see if they could find any trace of the FS-9 Raptor. But he knew the DSV Excalibur could not afford to be late for their rendezvous with the Iksar'rang.
Braden sighed. “Very well. Set course and begin the countdown to spacefold.”
[The Indian Ocean: 1:00 AM Falcanian Standard time]
Winged shadowed figures vaulted into the skies silhouetted by a palace caught in a blaze. She could feel the gusts of air become whirlwinds all around her. Flames turned night into day. A hot breeze warmed her body brought up by the heat of burning buildings and the beating of many wings.
She knew that in its fully constructed form, the palace had been a pyramid shaped building with immense towers capped with bronze domes atop each spire. Great oval styled doors once stood sentinel at the palace gates. They were etched with double helices. Before the bombing the walled garden had been a place of recreation for the dwellers of the fantastic fortress. The gardens had sheltered strange blossoms and unusual trees.
Above the burning palace a mountain range rose and she knew them to be the mighty and aged Himalayas. The Bharata people considered the range holy so also the winged-ones who had made a home at the Himalayan base honored it. Cries filled the air calling in an unfamiliar language: “Kroi, Kroi, Kroi!” words filled with anger and despair. Frederika felt the sadness for she experienced it herself. Pain, sorrow, anger and hatred burned inside her. In her deepest core she was responsible for the fleeing figures as though they were her kin. She needed to protect them.
Purple lightning struck from the sky. Some kind of weapons rained down upon the city and turned it to ash. She knew without a doubt that hope had been lost. Those winged beings were not taki
ng to the air to do battle, but rather to escape the carnage that befell their once glorious city.
In the darkened cabin.
Frederika sat up, her eyes quickly adjusting to the night. The dream throbbed in her brain. Something happened. Her instincts told her this vision, had been brought about by a change of course in the scheme of the universe. Déjà vu pressed down on the Morningstar and overwhelmed her. A cold feeling chilled her bones. Frederika felt as if doom itself had entered her life and she could do nothing to escape it. A thought nagged at her that she had some how been at fault for the conflagration of the city in her dreams. This greatly bothered her. How could the destruction be her doing?
Around the room she glanced and Frederika noticed that Mia had become uncovered on her futon. She went over and fixed the girl's covers. In the last few days, Frederika had grown very fond of the girl. Mia became the sister she never had.
[Unknown Space: 1:30 AM Falcanian Standard Time]
There is a Tarik aphorism which says the universe leans toward irony. What had hidden the Bloodwing from the Excalibur's sensors had been in truth the immense black mass of a funeral barge launched by a civilization a thousand years now gone. The barge propelled itself from the depths of hyperspace back into normal space because of a tremor in space-time which created a wormhole. Its appearance proved most fortuitous for the Falcanian crew. Indeed it could be nothing but destiny itself that these things had converged here and now.
Fashioned from a dark, sensor absorbing crystal, the barge was able to block the ship's sensors. Had Braden followed his gut and sent out a scout, the black sloping barge would have appeared to the naked eye, but hid the Tair'Aliran from sensors.
Kulcarin and his crew were right beneath the massive thing, its mass blocking the faint starlight from view. Kulcarin should have ordered his ship back to Earth. Instead, he chose to investigate the object that failed to register on his ship’s sensors, but could clearly be seen outside the portholes of his Bloodwing.
Had he returned home, Kulcarin would have saved himself a great deal of pain and trouble.
There came no responses to the Tair'Aliran's hails. The ship seemed lifeless. The strange vessel drank in the beams of the Tair'Aliran's forward illumination as the attack craft hovered before the ship in search for a means to dock. No seams or obvious cobbling together of plating could be found in the whole of the barge. The Falcanian corvette moved slowly up and under the black ship's hull, searching for some means to board her and learn about the technology that constructed a craft completely invisible to modern scanners.
Lord Aranskrai stroked his goatee and looked out at the wedge of a ship. He had come out here to stop the DSV Excalibur from completing her mission. In that he failed. He thought to compensate for his non-achievement by learning more about this sleek black ship and its construction. Who had built her? Where had it come from? How did its stardrive work? Answers to any of these questions would benefit the Falcanian Khanate. Kulcarin's sense of honor demanded that he act.
After three hours, Kulcarin and his crew at last discovered on the exterior of the black ship what appeared to be a hanger bay. The bay seemed large enough to hold the whole of the Raptor as well as a dozen more like it.
Kulcarin moved closer to the holo. “Can we breach that door?”
“It’s a crack in the shell,” Shierak affirmed.
Triumph flared in Kulcarin's eyes. “Prepare to grapple and breach. We're going in.”
The Tair'Aliran's ventral hatches clutched onto the alien ship’s hanger bay door and permitted for her crew to pierce through with a diamond headed maul. A probe concluded the atmosphere aboard the barge was breathable and within Terran ranges. Kulcarin and a half dozen of his men entered the alien vessel.
Whoever built this had been large. The size of an SUV turned on its nose to approximate by the dimensions of the doorways. When they entered the hanger bay, the Falcanians found it was empty of any craft, though it seemed the ships internal systems worked as subdued reddish light came on once the ship's internal sensors noticed the Falcanians.
Kulcarin walked with his men through the unadorned ship. They soon split into two teams to cover more ground. Mostly empty rooms were found. Slate black walls did register on scans and were not apparently made from whatever the outer hull had been formed from. Kulcarin wandered about the empty chambers, while he looked at his scanner. He had strayed from his men, fascinated by the idea of where he was and gone off into some other chambers more toward the center of the ship. Aranskrai's communicator chirped. “This is Grath, my team found what we think is the bridge.” There was a short pause before the voice spoke again. “The command chair – these beings were huge!”
Kulcarin smiled. He never heard his engineer filled with such awe before. “Anything that can tell us what, or who made her?”
“I think I found a data crystal... It's gigantic.”
“Bring it. My mother will find it of use,” Kulcarin commanded.
Colonel Aranskrai came to a large square door and pressed the oversized button on the nearby wall. The doors slid open, creaking as if in need of lubrication. Kulcarin stepped forward as he felt his third eye tingle. His Tahru tutor always told him to pay attention to that tingle. It usually meant something important lay ahead.
A box... No, rather a sarcophagus sat in the center of the room. Obsidian in color like the rest of the ship. It was simple, no markings to indicate if it were barren or occupied with remains. Across from the sarcophagus on the black wall were the first adornments Kulcarin had seen on this strange vessel. A mural glowed on the crystalline black bulkhead. Below it a block-like alien script told the tale, but Aranskrai could not read it.
Had Kulcarin been able to understand the hieroglyphs, three words would have been of interest to him: Gwareen, Kri-Skar, and Kranix T’Raul, were players in the mural’s epic. Two planets with armies between them clashed in the picture. One with large continents that seemed to have been carved by ice, great green oceans made it appear to be a jewel, a grand emerald. The other world red, perhaps hilly and its gray seas seemed to be filled with constant storm.
Aranskrai eyed harder the image. His thoughts interrupted by the tomb's door as it slammed shut. Kulcarin did not move, too enthralled with the pictures on the wall to bother with the mechanism. Instead he stepped closer to get a better look at the two armies between the red and green worlds.
They were large and covered with fur, ivory colored wool to be exact. Ram horns adorned their heads as they charged toward their much shorter opponents. Very little doubt to conclude by proportions these horned goat-men had built this black mausoleum ship. The other army bore a resemblance to brawny, six-feet tall… jackrabbits. Not typical cuddly bunnies by any means. They had extended fangs, spiky pelts and wore elaborate braids. Their soft fur ranged in shades of black, white or other beneath sparse armor. Probably not herbivores judged Kulcarin, given the predatory arrangement of their large eyes. These furry warriors were clearly hunters. The jackrabbit creatures wielded curved swords and carried almost old fashion projectile rifles. A dragon of fire led these feral rabbits. It was not evident though to Aranskrai which side in this onslaught between rams and hares could be labeled the aggressor.
Inscribed in the alien script beneath the mural glowed the name Kranix T’Raul.
The dragon of flame held Kulcarin's eye.
He heard an echo in his mind. A voice called out to him. It was not unfamiliar as all Falcanians felt it.
Char! That is all. The echo of the over-soul. That WiFi connection which all Falcanians experience.
The connection simply reconfigures, Kulcarin told himself.
He turned away from the mural with the intent of going from the chamber. His hand reached for the door button, yet he remained reluctant to open the tomb. Instead he turned back to face the sarcophagus. Before him the black box loomed. All sense of his individuality lost, Kulcarin keyed an alien code into the latch. As quickly as he recalled the code, the memo
ry of it erased itself from his mind.
A thousand years the sarcophagus had lain closed, sealed away, a prison hoped to be lost to the universe, now opened. The shape, long and coiled oil-black, its wings seemed to have been burnt away, and scorched to the bone. The creature's eyes were empty and lifeless. Kulcarin looked down at the corpse, reached out to feel the alien remains.
The beast turned its head. Its eyes glowed with flame and the scorched bone-wings burst to life. Aranskrai, normally a man of great courage, ran for the door but the creature fell upon him. He wrestled with the beast, but it subdued him with ease.
Yes, said a voice within Aranskrai's skull.
Who are you? What are you doing to me?
Kranix.
Kranix searched the creature's mind and body. He discovered this one proved familiar to him. He forgot many things over the countless years, but the memories began to return. They had met before, destined once more do so here and now. A moment yet to be flashed in his mind: blue light and gunfire. This Kulcarin was so much like him. Even winged. Kranix liked that.
Kranix had taken other bodies, but those forced to walk the earth were always so tedious. His natural state could fly the stars and this body had the potential to perhaps do the same given some alterations.
He burrowed deeper, examining this Kulcarin's life. A girl with long dark hair and pointed ears like this Falcanian was prominent within Aranskrai’s mind. She was called Sitara, Kulcarin's lover. He found this being's family and that he was a respected member of his people's military.
That would serve him well.
The biology of this Falcanian in part helped awaken Kranix from his thousand-year slumber. It seemed the Falcanian skeleton contained that rare mineral Q-X which also functioned as part of Kranix's composition. The mineral vibrated within him to endow the dragon with fascinating spatial abilities.
The perfect tool could be found in these Falcanians. Kranix could turn them into a fantastic army. Better than any he had made in the past. The potential to be had in the Falcanian peoples evolution was barely tapped.
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