Exiles (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book One)

by Dan Worth

  The lift slowed to a stop. They would have to wait their turn in the queue before launching.

  ‘So, how long were you in the Navy then?’ said Katherine conversationally.

  ‘Twenty-years, joined up just after the war. The K’Soth killed my father and being young and hot-headed I wanted to get back at the bastards so I joined up as soon as I reached eighteen. I never did get the chance to get even with them though, pity.’

  ‘How come you left?’

  ‘Well, I started feeling my age. All those long tours of duty, it’s a young man’s job really unless you make Captain or Admiral or something. I got as far as Lieutenant Commander and then I got badly injured in an accident, so I decided to get out. I kinda miss it though I suppose.’

  ‘You still hate the K’Soth?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess it’s dulled over the years but hell everyone in this part of space does, after what they did to us. It wasn’t only my Dad they killed. The truth is, I think a lot of people still want to even the score with them, and they seem to have voted for people who do too.’

  ‘That’s what worries me: our government’s been very belligerent lately.’

  ‘True, but don’t forget we’re in a better position to be so, the Navy was totally overhauled during my career with them. The ships they have now are light years ahead of what we had then, whilst the K’Soth sat back and just churned out more of the same old crap, and ours aren’t spread over a damn great empire like theirs are.’

  She nodded in agreement. Minaba continued. ‘You got to remember that the K’Soth military spends lots of time and effort just keeping their empire together. I reckon we could beat them if we had to.’

  ‘Well I hope you’re right, though I also hope that we never have to find out.’

  ‘Yeah well, me too I suppose. Besides, war’s bad for traders like me. I have no intention of getting the Nine Lives shot out from under me.’

  There was jolt and the lift started moving again. It reached the hub and stopped, then rotated to orientate itself with the dock exit whilst the air was pumped out of the chamber. Once aligned, the magnetic clamps released and Minaba retracted the landing gear, leaving the ship floating in the bay in zero gravity. Ahead, a double set of heavy doors opened, providing a letterbox view of a rotating star field. Minaba gently eased power to the engines and the Nine Lives moved smoothly forward out of the dock. Once outside, the vessel counteracted its rate of roll and headed off on a course out of the port area dictated to it by the computers in traffic control.

  Katherine peered out of the cockpit windows at the scene outside. Two colossal ore freighters were being loaded from the processing stations that hung alongside New Colorado. Their skeletal frames were being slowly filled by dozens of gigantic cargo crates that were wrestled deftly into place by the crews of the cargo tugs that swarmed around the ships. Looking forward she could see the ship ahead of the Nine Lives in the queue of traffic leaving New Colorado, a sporty looking private vessel, it reached the edge of the traffic control zone and jumped. Peering behind she could see the vast metal disk that formed the asteroid’s northern port, a circular metal cliff clasped by the rough rocky bulk of the asteroid.

  Minaba sighed. ‘You know, I never get tired of looking at it all, even after all these years. That’s another reason why I still fly, I’m afraid my wife has to share my affections with all this.’ He looked troubled for a moment. ‘Now that’s odd.’ he said, squinting at a console.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘One of those cargo shuttles just turned some pretty high power scanning equipment on us, I wouldn’t have picked it up with the standard instruments fitted to this vessel, but I put in a fancy new set last month.’

  ‘Oh great.’

  Minaba looked at Katherine quizzically. ‘Is it you or me that they’re interested in Doctor?’

  ‘Me, probably. Why, you aren’t smuggling anything illegal are you?’

  ‘Not today no, not that I’m aware of anyway,’ he said and gave her a searching look. ‘You can tell me all about it during the flight if you like, though I won’t press you. Your secret’s safe with me. I didn’t survive for so long out here by ratting on my customers that’s for sure.’

  The Nine Lives reached the edge of New Colorado’s port jurisdiction. Minaba reached for a console and activated the vessel’s jump engines. The view outside twisted and stretched and then went dark.

  ‘It’s a long story captain, I take it my notoriety hasn’t reached this far from Earth yet?’ said Katherine.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m an archaeologist. My colleagues and I uncovered what can only be described as a giant can of worms. The thing is: I have no idea what it was we brought to light. We found an antiquated hulk floating in space and boarded it, believing it to be an important historical find. But it seems that certain people are very upset about it indeed, we’ve had all sort of harassment since.’

  ‘These people, are they likely to want to kill you? Only I’d like to be prepared in case we’re attacked on the approach to Maranos.’

  ‘Possibly. One of my colleagues has gone missing. I was told he may have killed trying to evade them. On the other hand, they’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill me and they haven’t, so maybe I’m just being paranoid.’

  ‘Well, just to be on the safe side I’ll make sure what weapons I have are fully charged when we exit hyperspace. You never know.’

  ‘Thanks, and I’m sorry to have caused you any additional trouble.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about it. I could do with the excitement.’ Minaba grinned gleefully at her and began prodding the weapons console.

  Forty hours later and the Nine Lives was approaching the end of her jump. Katherine was dozing in her cabin and was awoken by Minaba’s knock on the door. He called through the thin metal.

  ‘Doctor? We’re coming out of hyperspace in a few minutes, we’ve made good time actually, but I thought you might like to come up to the cockpit. If your suspicions are correct you’ll want to be strapped securely into your seat for this one.’

  Katherine pushed herself off the bunk, pulled her boots on and followed Minaba back up to the cockpit. She sat down in the left hand cockpit couch and strapped herself in.

  ‘Okay, turrets set to auto-defence, missile bay is open. If anyone’s waiting for us they’re going to get a big surprise.’

  Katherine gritted her teeth.

  ‘Exiting hyperspace in five, four, three, two, one…’ the star field twisted back into view. ‘Returning to normal space, jump engines off.’

  ‘Any sign?’

  Minaba examined the sensor display.

  ‘Nope, radar’s clean, gravitic anomaly sweep is clean, star field occlusion scanner is also clean, heat sensors can’t see anything either. Looks like we’re in the clear.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  Katherine thought that Minaba actually looked disappointed as he powered down the weapons and began orientating the ship for re-entry. He took hold of the controls and gently rolled the ship, bringing the planet Maranos into view. It looked most unusual as they approached its northern polar region.

  For a start there was no night side, the two halves of the planet were lit at all times by its parent stars. Most of the planet was covered by one vast desert that extended north of the tropics. Above and below this band the environment became arid scrubland and then tropical jungle. This extended almost to the poles, which were capped by two almost circular seas. Seen from their angle of approach, the planet had the appearance of a giant yellowing eyeball with a green iris and dark blue pupil.

  Minaba gestured at the view. ‘We’ll be landing near the capital, Erais. It’s just by the shores of the northern sea there. This is the tricky part I’m afraid, so don’t distract me until we’ve landed.’

  He turned the ship until its nose faced the planet, and then increased power to the engines. When he had approached close enough to the planet and gained
enough velocity he brought the nose up slightly. Too much speed and the ship would crash, too little and she would skim off the atmosphere and back into space and they would have to repeat the manoeuvre. Minaba spoke to Erais traffic control, operated by the Commonwealth, as he adjusted the controls. The ship began to shudder slightly as it was buffeted by the upper atmosphere and Katherine could see the heat shielding glow slightly as it repelled the heat generated by atmospheric friction. The rushing air outside whistled shrilly with increasing volume as the air thickened around the ship

  They were heading for the upper cloud deck. The whistling sound had now built to a howl as the Nine Lives aero-braked against the thickening atmosphere. Now noticeably slowing her descent, she punched through the cloud layer. The vessel’s speed was now in single figure mach numbers. Minaba employed a measure of reverse thrust and eased out the brakes into the rushing airflow. The Nine Lives vibrated alarmingly for a moment as the engines whined in protest. Now travelling at subsonic speeds, they descended below the thick lower cloud layer on final approach. Katherine looked down and saw that they were speeding over a dense jungle that been cleared in places for roads and farms and what looked like a railway line.

  They were now in the spaceport’s landing pattern. The automated guidance control took over and brought the Nine Lives smoothly down onto a long concrete runway flanked on either side by thick encroaching foliage. Minaba let out a sigh and relaxed as they slowed to a halt, then taxied toward the small terminal building. A couple of other ships were visible on the apron. Both of them looked antiquated, though there was another vessel sitting in a hangar around the side. It looked far more modern, a silvery ovoid that appeared to be an Esacir ship.

  Minaba brought the ship to a halt and powered down the engines.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Erais, capital of Maranos.’

  ‘Thank you Captain, I hope they paid you well enough for this.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘You think I’d have accepted this job if they hadn’t? Really, it was no problem. Like I said, an old trader like me needs a bit of excitement now and then. You take care now.’

  ‘I will, and thanks again.’ She extended a hand and Minaba shook it firmly.

  Katherine collected her luggage and exited the rear of the cooling ship, taking care not to touch its skin which was still hot from re-entry. She was struck by the warmth and humidity of the climate, which whilst not too unpleasant, was a shock to her after the relative coolness of the ship. She headed across the apron to the terminal building, but there seemed to be virtually no-one around. As she approached she saw a well built, dark haired man dressed in a short sleeved shirt and trousers emerge from the terminal and head toward her. He moved lightly in an almost cat-like manner. She felt a sense of alarm, the way he moved: he looked like an agent. The man approached her and gave her a disarmingly friendly smile.

  ‘Hello, are you Doctor Katherine O’Reilly?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Welcome to Maranos. I’m Steven Harris, the Ambassador’s aide and bodyguard. Hope you enjoy your stay with us. Here I’ll take those,’ he said and took hold of her luggage and hefted it onto his shoulder.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Okay it’s this way to the car, and then it’s just a short drive to the residence.’

  Katherine followed Steven around the back of the terminal where a chunky open topped four-wheel drive vehicle was parked, sitting high on its balloon tyres. He placed her bags on the back seat and got in the front. Katherine got in the passenger side. Steven started the vehicle, turned it deftly around, and then accelerated away from the spaceport down an uneven paved road that led to Erais.

  ‘So you’re here as part of the archaeology team then eh?’ he asked her over the whine of the electric engine.

  ‘Yes that’s right, I’m expecting a colleague and a survey ship’s due to arrive in a few days.’

  ‘Oh, your friend’s here already, he came in a couple of days ago.

  ‘Rekkid’s here? He’s okay?’ she felt a wash of relief.

  ‘Well yeah he seems fine. Why the worry?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen him that all,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘Also I heard that he’s been ill.’ she added.

  Steven gave her an odd look. ‘Well… he seems fine now, though I haven’t seen much of him. He’s been in his room most of the time since he arrived. He said he was catching up on his research.’

  The road was becoming busier. They passed increasing numbers of the locals on foot as well as carts pulled by stocky six legged beasts of burden. Katherine examined the people as they passed, they had thick sinuous blue-green bodies that lacked legs but which sat on a thick flexible foot pad. Their hunched upper torsos ended in smooth bullet shaped heads that had small dark eyes and a mouth with large branching gills on either side. Their two arms were long and thin and ended in dextrous four fingered hands. To Katherine’s untrained eyes many of them seemed quite poor. A large number were dressed in dirty, ragged clothing and many seemed to be malnourished, olive green skin stretched taut over their bones. They stared back at her with a mix of curiosity and perhaps some hostility.

  ‘That’s the locals, they call themselves the Dendratha.’ Steven commented. ‘They weren’t too advanced when we arrived, about the level of pre-industrial Earth. We’ve given them a bit of a helping hand, but there’s still a way to go. People still die from curable diseases, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I saw a railway on the way in.’

  ‘Yeah, that was built by the Commonwealth. Made moving around this rock a lot easier I can tell you, that desert is really harsh, too dusty for atmospheric flights sometimes. I hear that you’re going there?’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You’re off to excavate a site at their holy city, Marantis aren’t you? It’s right on the equator in the middle of the desert.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘It’ll be okay, the rail journey is fairly quick considering the distance. You can’t fly unfortunately, aside from the dust storms in the deep desert they wouldn’t let us build an airfield anywhere near Marantis for religious reasons.’

  They were entering Erais now and the road was now much busier. Steven had to repeatedly use the vehicle’s horn to move ambling Dendratha and their farm vehicles out of the way. The city was composed mainly of two- or three- storey buildings with sweeping, sloped roofs that seemed to crowd the busy narrow streets. Some seemed quite modern and pleasant; others were more dilapidated and run down. A variety of odours wafted in the air, the smells of alien cooking, unwashed Dendratha bodies, the sweat and dung of pack animals. The noise of the city was cacophonous; market traders hawked their wares, music spilled from open doors, animals bellowed and Steven beeped the horn impatiently.

  Eventually they reached the sea front which was smarter and more affluent. Large houses, no doubt belonging to the richer of the city folk, faced the gently lapping sea. A number of steam and sail powered ships sat at anchor out in clear blue waters of the bay.

  Steven turned right along the promenade and headed in the direction of a rocky promontory that overlooked the harbour. They climbed the road up the side of outcropping until they reached a set of iron gates which swung open as the car approached. Behind them was a large human built house built to resemble the ancient colonial style. It was surrounded by carefully manicured lawns and flowerbeds and the gravel drive ran up to the door, out of which dashed a thin, excited looking figure who waved at them. Steven brought the car to a halt in front of the house steps.

  ‘Hello Rekkid,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s good to see you, where have you been all this time?’ She got out of the car and embraced the Arkari who grinned bashfully back at her.

  ‘I’ve had quite a time Katherine. I have quite a surprise for you but ahh… it’ll have to wait. Steven, get Katherine’s things for her would you? Thanks.’ He led her inside into the cool and dark of the house and, whilst S
teven was still struggling back at the car with the bags, Rekkid spoke, his voice lowered.

  ‘I found out what that log contains Katherine and it’s absolutely incredible. When I show it to you then you’ll know why we’ve been pursued.’ He glanced back at Steven. ‘But like I say, it will have to wait. We can’t trust anyone with this until we’re ready to go public.’

  Chapter 5

  Chen was bored, bored beyond belief. Nevertheless, she counted herself lucky; if a few months of tedium was all the punishment she suffered for the calamity at Highpoint Station then she had gotten off incredibly lightly. She still had her rank and her ship, unlike that fool Harris, she thought.

  The tribunal that had taken place had absolved Chen of most of the blame. It had been ruled that she and her ship had been placed in a delicate situation that they had not been trained to deal with and that furthermore that when the ship had unexpectedly come under fire she had attempted to defend her crew. A large portion of the blame had been levelled at Harris, for disobeying his orders and the chain of command, for distracting Chen during the incident and thus unwittingly contributing to the surprise attack, for placing the interests of a foreign power above those of the Commonwealth and for attempting unauthorised negotiations with the Vendiri. He had been stripped of his rank as a field agent and sent to baby-sit some dotty old ambassador on a backwards world in the middle of nowhere. Chen gained a great deal of satisfaction from this. She couldn’t stand the sanctimonious idiot, though she recalled she hadn’t always felt that way about him. Still, she told herself, people change.

  There had been a price to pay though. She now found herself and her ship patrolling a cluster of mining worlds near the northern edge of the border with Arkari space. The Mark Antony was effectively in disgrace and they had spent the last few months escorting transport ships, chasing down petty criminals and rescuing hick miners and their clapped out under maintained death-trap ships, tasks usually assigned to less experienced captains and smaller ships. Such was their punishment.