Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1)

by Yunker, Todd

  It gnawed at her that she was still playing the part of the slave girl and had not identified herself or her mission. She had searched the ship as best she could without drawing attention to what she was doing and had found nothing of her world anywhere. If what Alec and Dancer had talked about were true, it would mean he was from the mother world. Was that possible?

  *

  Alec stood on the curb, waiting for an opening in the skimmer traffic. The spaceport’s gate was closed, and the Temple Coffee Shop’s sign flickered behind them. Alec began to step into the street when Electra said, in a strong, confident voice, “Would you have stood for satisfaction and my honor, Captain Shackleton?”

  Alec stopped and turned to her. “Without hesitation. My, but don’t you speak Standard very well. Why the charade?”

  “You are my fifth master since I was taken captive and sold into slavery. Captain, you are the first of my race I have seen that I feel can be trusted. I had hoped to find more of our people — a world even — but, out here, we are a dying race, and, from what I have gathered, we have no home world.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  Electra hesitated. “I was part of an expedition from my world. The crew and I were taken prisoners and enslaved.”

  Dancer scanned the dark streets and led them through the traffic to the sidewalk, as they headed toward the main spaceport gate.

  Curious, Alec asked, “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been so long since I’ve seen any of them.”

  “Where are your people from? Earth?”

  “I do not know of ‘Earth,’” Electra replied.

  “My people came from a small planet we called ‘Earth.’ It’s gone now. I’m looking for the descendants of the tribe of humans that left our world long ago. Dancer assures me they are your ancestors.”

  Dancer caught a glimpse of movement behind them. “Let’s get a move on. The Quest received and forwarded to me a message from O. She’s filled your order.”

  “She has found another piece of the inscription for us.” Alec looked out into the darkness. The barking of an alien dog broke the silence. “Better hurry.”

  *

  Gino worked diligently to get past Quest’s door force field in the low light of the spaceport. Gino pulled out a Spaceship Slim Jim and worked the lock. Worrell finished the installation of a tracking unit on the aft section of the outer engine support. They took the control unit from a toolbox, looked over it closely, and clicked the button to arm the device and for camouflage. The unit attached to the skin of the Quest blurred and vanished from the visible spectrum of light. Worrell smiled, picked up his toolbox, and walked around the Quest to where Gino was still trying his luck at opening the door.

  Bolts of energy from blasters struck the ground about them, forcing them to duck behind nearby cargo crates.

  Alec’s voice called out from the darkness, “Come on out, boys — now!”

  Worrell and Gino took out weapons with each of their four arms, and then they each split into four sub-creatures of equal sizes, each with one arm holding a weapon. All eight creatures nodded. The four from Worrell spread out around the crates, but they still spoke as one. “Boss said we collect your ship!” The Worrell group fired at them.

  “Someone stole my cargo, boys. I need just a little more time,” yelled Alec from the shadows surrounding the ship.

  The four sub-creatures from Gino made it back to the Quest. Blasts from two directions scattered the sub-creatures around the ship’s landing gear.

  The Worrell group demanded, “No more time. Pay now!”

  The eight sub-creatures making up Worrell and Gino fired back at those hiding in the night who had trapped them against the ship. The physical attack was surgical, with a powerful well-placed strike from a staff incapacitating one of the sub-creatures. The only report of what happened was a screeching cry that came from under the Quest. The Gino sub-creatures now numbered only three as they came out of hiding. The Worrell group yelled out at the night, “We must have ship or credits.”

  Another cry, another, and still another. The assailant had removed three from the Gino group along with one from Worrell from the battle. Those who were left exchanged short chirps and squeaks.

  “It seems you’re a bit short of men.” Alec and Dancer came from the dark with weapons drawn. The sub-creatures tried to assemble into a single creature but failed, the sub-creature from Gino unable to integrate with Worrell’s.

  The Worrell group whined, “We must be whole. Where are us?”

  Alec trained his weapon on them. “Drop the blasters, boys!”

  The creatures looked at each other and followed the instructions.

  “Electra!” Alec shouted. Electra, with Alec’s staff twirling, came out from under the Quest.

  “I like its balance,” said Electra as she held out the staff.

  Alec spoke to the Worrell group, “I need more time. What do you guys think?”

  Electra squeezed the staff just so, returned it to its original wrist bracer form, and put it on as she and Dancer entered the Quest. Alec stopped at the landing as the missing sub-creatures, groggy and stumbling, appeared from under the Quest.

  “Sorry, boys, got to go.” Alec stood in the hatch frame as the thrust of the engines blew outward hard from under the ship. The ship rose quickly from the ground, its bow spun on its X-axis, pointing to a new point on the horizon, and sped from the spaceport’s controlled airspace. He could be seen disappearing into the interior as the ship blasted off high into the night sky of Ferrar.

  The sub-creatures sorted themselves out and reassembled into Worrell and Gino. They ran to a nearby space freighter that could best be described as chaos with space drive. The hull of the freighter had been stitched together from at least ten different ships, with a visually interesting patchwork of textures, colors, and alloys composing the ship’s exterior.

  The engines were fouled with the cheap propellant filling the internal tanks but sputtered to life through the odd-sized exhaust ports. The problem seemed cleared, and they lifted off.

  *

  Alec raced through the ship toward the control deck. He managed to miss the clutter of the Koty search and rushed through the doorway to the command deck.

  “Are they following?” he demanded. He glanced at the screens as he plopped down into his seat. He quickly manipulated the sensors and defensive systems to cover their escape from the planet Ferrar. If anyone was going to follow them, he wanted to make it hard for them to do so.

  “Of course, they are; the Koty battleships Illia and Saleen are in orbit and angling courses to cut us off.” Dancer prepared the ship for FTL flight. All systems were in the nominal range of the custom specifications he and Alec had developed for the improvements they had made to the Quest. The Quest had been outfitted to be a sleek and long-distance runner. Electra was seated at the engineer’s station scanning the panel for anomalies that would hinder Quest’s departure and readying the controls.

  Dancer keyed in access codes and coordinates into the nav computer. “Course entered. O, here we come.”

  Alec looked over his shoulder to Electra, noticing her run through system checks. “Hang on! This could be bumpy,” he said, preparing to engage the FTL drive. He stopped. “They have FTL-dampening ships out.”

  The Illia and Saleen had deployed FTL field-dampening ships in a screen across the projected path of the Quest. This meant that, if the Quest traveled through that screen, the FTL field required to attain Faster Than Light speed would collapse, and the engines would shut down. They would revert to normal space speed, and they would be captured. It was a standard procedure used in stopping smugglers from running a blockade. Alec and Dancer had some experience running these blockades.

  “Tracking Koty ships coming up from the planet. No way to go back.”

  Alec scanned the deployment of FTL dampers. “This will be close.” He changed the course of the Quest to align with a different coord
inate in space. It was a new starting position needed for his plan. Alec re-keyed the programmed FTL course into the navigation system. The Quest raced toward the starting position. The calculations made the yacht hit the coordinate just as programmed.

  The Quest blurred as it snapped to FTL speed and almost instantly fell back to normal space as they hit the dampening fields. The ship’s burst of speed threw off the pursuers as they lost the Quest from their screens. Quest’s now sub-light speed and course took the ship through a small gap in the net meant to ensnare them. The ship hurtled through the FTL-dampening fields, the ships, and their supporting fighter groups that had been sent to capture them. The Quest sped by the command bridge of the Illia, quickly making a break for the open space to be found on the far side of the battleship.

  Alec reset the FTL engines as they left the influence of the FTL dampers behind the Illia. He hit the button for a second time in less than a minute. The aft of the ship burst to life as the engines fired up, and the Quest blurred as it left normal space and vanished.

  The Skiptracer ship rose out of the atmosphere. The course it had taken was in the general direction of the Koty and their fleet. It fired up its FTL engines to pursue and blurred into hyperspace, but, just as suddenly, it dropped back into normal space as if it had hit an invisible wall of clear gel. The FTL dampers had captured the ship as if it were an insect in amber. The ship sputtered and then stopped, drifting into the line of FTL damper ships.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The bridge remained at full efficiency. The expansion of Koty Union territory provided ample time for the crew to become fully integrated with the ship and with one another.

  Captain K’Dhoplon presided over the group from his command chair. He had been in three major campaigns with them. They were not what he would have chosen to go into battle with, but they would follow obediently and not question his orders. It was hard to find staff that was both good and obedient at the same time. His last first officer was excellent at his duty and had drilled the ship’s crew relentlessly. They had even put his first officer above him as most trusted commander, an unfortunate circumstance for the first officer, who had to be found wanting and then executed before he got any ideas about the ship’s Captaincy. His first officer even swore an oath of allegiance to the Captain as he was being put to death. It was very unfortunate for everyone concerned.

  Captain K’Dhoplon surveyed his current command staff; his attention stopped when he reached the human. That creature needed to be removed from the ship, but doing so would create problems for the mission. The Exalted One had them on some kind of archaeological dig instead of crushing worlds and softening them up for occupation. The recovery of forgotten technology on a dead world brought none of the recognition the defeat of an opposing fleet would. It was not the glory he had come to expect as Captain of this great ship. The human had convinced the Exalted One that he could find a treasure trove of First Ones’ technology, tech that would give the Koty the edge in their plans to expand across the galaxy. He had seen nothing to convince him that the human Wolfgang Gray knew anything. As a matter of fact, what Gray had done was to have them follow this other human, Shackleton. Shackleton was the key.

  Gray ran his hands over the inscription recovered from the Quest, Shackleton’s ship. The pink material had undergone extensive analysis and testing. Its composition was that of a very dense crystalline optical circuitry and some internal power system that allowed for memory and display functions. The unique part of this functionality was that, if it were broken, each of the smaller pieces would also be able to function independently of the larger, whole unit. Like a hologram, the broken piece had the same information imprinted on it as the whole, larger piece. It just worked at a lower power level proportional to its new size. It was hard to estimate just how big the rest of this inscription would be.

  “What is it?” asked Captain K’Dhoplon.

  Gray managed, “It’s part of something larger, but we have no way of telling how much larger. It has an inscription, writing, on it. I am unfamiliar with the language, and your computers are unable to translate it.”

  “The Koty Union have the largest databases for all things, including translation. You have simply failed to input the data requested correctly. I will have a Koty technician do the search for you. Remind me why I need to keep you alive?”

  “The Exalted One wishes it so, and your technician will do no better in translating the inscribed language to anything we now know, including the knowledge databases that you acquired in your expansion. This is a dead language.”

  “Is this what Shackleton searches for?” Captain K’Dhoplon tried to find a reason that could justify the death of this tiresome human.

  “It’s only one piece of the puzzle,” Gray stated, “one Shackleton can’t do without.”

  “I have listened to your reports to the Exalted One, human. Do not think your life is safe because you live. You have value to the mission; if we fail, your life is forfeit.”

  *

  Gray paced the floor to the right of Captain K’Dhoplon, sprawled over his command chair. Gray knew he had to come up with some new information that would placate the Captain. Somehow he would extend the mission and his life.

  Gray stopped and walked over to K’Dhoplon. “Captain, I want you to follow the signal of the tracking device you had planted on the Quest. Don’t get too close, but don’t lose them. I want it to be a surprise when we drop in on them.”

  “Tracking device’?” said Captain K’Dhoplon, sounding casual about the breach in protocol.

  “During the search on the Quest, you had a passive hyperspace tracking unit placed in the outer hull as far as was feasible from the ship’s interior.” Gray returned the Captain’s gaze. “You didn’t want them to find it through normal interior scans.”

  “A moment,” Captain K’Dhoplon replied curtly. He focused on the sensor officer. “Where is the ship?”

  “The ship, Captain, is on the edge of our sensor range. It comes and goes from sensors. It currently is beyond our range but should be back soon.”

  “What?!” demanded the Captain as he got up from his seat. The sensor officer looked to those around him for support. He got none.

  “Are they on your screen now?” spat the Captain.

  “No, sir,” replied the frightened sensor officer.

  “When were they to be back on sensors?”

  “They should have been back already.” The sensor officer had gone pale — which, for the Koty, meant utter terror.

  “You allowed them to escape. The gods will not tolerate the great Koty founding a new empire with you among us.” Captain K’Dhoplon signaled his security staff over to the sensor station.

  The sensor officer wailed and pleaded, “Captain, they should be back on screen any second.”

  The two members of the security staff dragged away the offending sensor officer to the open wall unit. Each held an upper body arm. The one-way force field of the unit allowed material to be pitched in through the opening. Its chipping mechanism made it possible for material to be ejected through the door if the one-way force field was not in place while in use.

  The sensor officer was pitched into the empty cylindrical space, the bin, or working space, of the vertical chipper. The chipper’s energy blades came to life, rotating through the bin at hundreds of times a minute, starting at the back wall. It could reduce a half-meter by two-meter hardwood tree trunk to sawdust in less than two seconds. The design did a fine job of chipping anything put inside it. The sensor officer’s body became a pile of bloody pulp on the floor of the chipper. The finishing cycle included an auto-rinsing agent sprayed from the top of the cylinder, working itself down to the floor. A brushing mechanism activated, followed by a second rinse cycle. The remains, having been treated with the rinse dissolve, flowed out the draining grill compromising the bottom of the chipper.

  Captain K’Dhoplon turned to Wolfgang Gray. “Doctor, don’t test my patience. You h
umans should know your place. We Koty are the future.”

  “Captain, you would be surprised at how many times someone has said much the same thing on my world,” said Gray. “It did not always work for them.” Gray glanced from Captain K’Dhoplon to the chipper. “Not to say that it won’t be a terrific success for the Koty Union, of course.”

  “Of course,” came the response from Captain K’Dhoplon. He was in the process of estimating how much arc he would have to give Gray’s body to have him clear the railing and land in the chipper.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The command deck of the Quest was dimly lit by the control indicators and interface screens as Alec checked the long-range sensors. He keyed commands for a more sensitive energy-detection program. Alec had seen something just on the edge of Quest’s sensor range, but now it seemed to be gone. Even with the finest adjustments he could manage on the energy sensors, he could not get anything to show up. A good thing — since it meant that they were being followed. But was it better to know that for sure than for him to be constantly looking over his shoulder. He stared at the screens, and they remained empty of ships.

  Dancer turned to Alec. “Nothing on the communication channels, and I don’t think anyone’s following us.” Dancer checked for any anomalies. “We are going to hear them coming before they see us.” Dancer got up. “I have scheduled maintenance to perform if we want to stay in space.” He left the command deck.

  Electra came forward from the engineering station and took the copilot’s chair less than a meter from him. She was wearing a khaki jumpsuit she had found, paired with some combat boots. Alec could not help but notice that the jumpsuit fitted her snugly, as the material was designed to do, but yet stretched where needed and conformed to the wearer. She made it look good.

  They had not talked about what had happened or not happened in her compartment. It was awkward. His emotions were in turmoil. He was full of self-doubt, questioning himself, and perhaps seeing something that was not there. He felt an attraction, and, yet, for her, it was as if the event had not happened. What had it been for her? What was he thinking? Nothing had happened other than some kissing. She certainly was offering more, but why had he not taken her? He took a slow, deep breath and filled his lungs with the scent of vanilla spice.