by Peter Kratky
Narhum shut up for a few seconds. Although in everything related to the transmission of mental information between the LauKlars, talking about time is risky. Verbal information is linear, one word after the other, one sound after another, always forward. Mental transmission was not immediate, but neither was it linear. Silences were not moments without details, but they were not completely white.
“Your attitude is commendable,“ Narhum finally commented. “And humans are certainly a mystery in themselves. But they're as confused as we are. We cannot read their minds except when they expressly refer to a particular idea verbally, and we do not have data on the reason why the Xarwen stored their data. What is the conclusion of all this?”
“There is no conclusion, “Deblar replied with remarkable despair. “It is absurd nonsense and pointless gibberish, and so far, our work has only generated several questions, and no answers, in a highly questionable model of effectiveness, not to mention the incapacity that we have shown in this study. We have got nothing from humans, and I doubt if we will get anything now that they feel supported. If they know anything.”
“Exactly,” exclaimed Narhum without intending to delve into Deblar's frustration. “That's why you'll have to keep investigating. The President and I think this is a very interesting issue. But it is still a scientific investigation of archaeology, we cannot afford to violate the laws for something like that, nor for any other reason or circumstance. What were you planning to do, Deblar? Hold the humans until they spoke?”
“That defines quite well what my intentions were,” Deblar replied. “Always with the utmost care and clear respect.”
Clearly clear,” Narhum said with an even joking tone for a LauKlar. “You must understand that this matter could have become a problem. If humans are held back for a long time and become known on a galactic scale, it would have been a blow to our interstellar policy of species welfare. What would the Tarw, the Karit, the Mannkotr have thought? A species such as ours, which is considered a leader in respect for life, and which by minor research is dedicated to keeping another intelligent species in a hole, even being extinct, by the simple argument of “everything for science”. We can't expose ourselves to that, Deblar. We can't.”
Deblar raised her wings vigorously, a gesture that contained a significant symbolic charge of force. “I think things are getting confused. At least it cannot be considered as such until the facts under investigation have been established.”
“It's archaeology, “Narhum replied. “It is not a complex project of high level and high cost. This research has opened a series of questions of great interest, but our species will not change either to evolve or to deal with a crisis, simply because these archaeological questions are resolved or not. In addition, the High Council supports this research, and its reputation enables it to have the means to carry it out. But we can't consider this first level project. Much less use humans for their own scientific ends. It's selfish and arrogant of us.”
Deblar made a pretense of wanting to respond, but she limited herself to a ‘okay,’ turning around, spreading her blue-white wings in a typical gesture of respect, and flying out of the Great Hall. And her determination was clear: now, more than ever, she was going to make every effort to solve, in one way or another, the skein that the discovery of the laboratory had become, with all the consequences that this implied. For the High Council, that was a routine, secondary investigation, nothing more. For her it was the tip of an iceberg that she wanted to solve as directly as possible. The most direct, and the most cautious. She was never going to do anything again that implied or moved members of the High Council to investigate what was happening. The turmoil of human regeneration had caused unrest and confrontation, and although it was necessary, it would not allow a similar situation to develop. She would do whatever she had to do. And nobody was going to care, because nobody was going to be informed.
The moment that she and her predecessors had been waiting a long time had arrived. The current events, once her suspicions with humans had been confirmed, would lead her to make a decision that would forever change the course of LauKlars history. A decision that would have consequences as never before had been seen in the annals of the peoples and worlds of the Galaxy...
Galactic Encyclopedia: LauKlar ships.
The current LauKlar ships, interstellar vessels for the journey through the Galaxy, are the product of thousands of years of constant improvements. They usually have many sizes, but there are two basic types: the 5- to 15-kilometre model for exploration, and the 110- to 230-kilometre model for transportation. Between both sizes, some units of between 40 and 70 kilometers are built for all kinds of activities.
Some ships are equipped with real living ecosystems, and some special models of more than 250 kilometers are used to simulate complete environments very similar to those of a planet, either for the LauKlars themselves, or for other species that, for whatever reason, have had to abandon their original planets.
There are also smaller ships, two to five kilometers long, designed almost exclusively for combat. These ships can destroy an entire solar system in a few hours. They do not use firearms, but a phase variation of the gravitational field that disturbs the system cumulatively, so that a small change in the shape of gravitational waves at the exact point leads to the disappearance of virtually the entire stellar system, destroying life and all possibility of life on any previously inhabited planet. But the LauKlars wouldn't put a stellar system at risk if it weren't for an absolutely essential cause.
Other than that, LauKlar combat weapons are of various types, but the most powerful are based on cannons of high energy gravimetric or electromagnetic fields, which destroy any known ship in a matter of seconds.
The origin of the Age of Chaos
The LauKlar shuttle, which was carrying the group of twenty-seven humans, with Ronta at the controls, landed softly on the surface of the Earth, as they had requested. In reality, the word ‘landed’ was a way of expressing an idea, since the ship was suspended by the antigravity reactor.
Ronta took the humans to the laboratory where they had been found, and Helen began to give instructions to several members of the group, who began to move in different directions through the area where the Xarwen teams were located. They didn't seem to breathe with the difficulty that was foreseeable. He also missed so much organization. Why run? What was all that movement and instructions the human female seemed to be giving?
Something was definitely going on. Ronta verified that the humans, instead of starting to investigate the place, began to manage it, to control it. But how was that possible? Not even the LauKlars were able to fully understand the sophistication of the Xarwen systems, and hard work was being done to explain the technology of those ancient beings who lived between humans and the LauKlars. What were humans supposed to be doing then? Would it be a ritual? It didn't look like that. Because a ritual would not bring the Xarwen instruments back to life, as it was happening before his eyes.
Several humans were manipulating terminals that didn't exist seconds ago. Where they had come from seemed inexplicable, although Ronta assumed that they might have been hidden somehow. The place began to come alive with a rumor of something, like an initiator, an increasingly sharp and penetrating sound, of some system feeding energy to something inconceivable. Ronta tried to communicate everything to his superiors, but the transmission was blocked at source. Somehow, they were intercepting their signal. But how was that possible? They were just primitive beings...
“Scott! How's everything going?” Helen asked.
“In very good condition,” Scott responded as he consulted a console. “Negative field has kept the systems safe. Millions of years have passed here, but the systems are no more than two thousand years old. They're practically brand new.”
“Perfect,” whispered Helen smiling. “If the field has endured here with that time shift, above and in all other locations the same thing will have happened.”
&nb
sp; “It's most likely,“ Scott commented. “Although the time matrix can never be accurate, the deviation will not be greater than two or three percent.”
“Okay, let's get going. I'm going to talk to our esteemed chicken that you've kindly brought us. You go ahead with the preparations.”
“Yes, Freyja.” Helen approached Ronta, who looked at her strangely without understanding anything.
“Ronta?“ said Helen smiling as she looked at the enormous being before her.
“I am the one they call it that way,” he responded mechanically with the classic Lauklar greeting.
“Does your ship have access to universal data on your species, I presume?”
“That's right. Each computer contains a database of general documentation of known species and the Galactic Encyclopedia. What are you doing with those consoles? Where did they come from? How did you get all the systems up and locked down communications?”
“Too many questions,” Helen answered as she was accessing Ronta's shuttle computer, rising above her feet. “I have too many things to do now. But don't worry, I'm with you right now...”
“Are you going to at least tell me what you're doing with those panels, human?”
“These databases of your ship will serve as initial support for general information to locate us,” Helen said ignoring the question, and while accessing Ronta's shuttle computer easily. He observed how the human named Helen could break all the safety protocols of her ship, something impossible for such a primitive species. Then Helen stepped off the shuttle, looked directly at him, and said:
“Ronta, my friend, you are a great pilot and a good boy, as well as a spectacular member of your species. But now, what you're seeing condemns you. As they used to say in my day, there can't be any witnesses.”
Without understanding what was happening yet, Ronta stepped back in a reflective way, only to turn his eyes and see three humans with strange objects in their hands. Ronta took a moment to realize that they were probably weapons of some sort. Again, where those weapons came from was a complete mystery. He was aware that the entire area had been thoroughly examined by specialists. If there were weapons, they should have been detected immediately. If there were hidden systems, such as the terminals that humans were operating, they would have had to be seen, even if they were perfectly hidden. However, for some reason, this had not been the case. Either a very advanced cloaking system had kept part of the laboratory's systems secret, or the explanation was very different from what appearances showed. Not to mention the ease with which they had accessed his computer. Ronta tried to re-activate his integrated communicator to talk to his superiors. And in a quick turn, he raised his wings sharply, causing what for humans was a small-scale hurricane. He took advantage of the moments of confusion to raise the flight and leave the area at high speed. He was safe. Or so it seemed.
“We have to go,” Karl said.
“And that's what we'll do,” answered Helen. “But I want that bird.” Scott instructed two women to accompany him.
After a few moments, they surfaced. One of the women accompanying Scott carried a handheld device, which operated through a small portable console. She pointed to an area, and they saw a giant hole in the sky appear. It was something similar to a tunnel that emitted a red-violet light and whose edges were like tongues of fire, but did not burn. From that gigantic hole opened in the same fabric of what was once a blue sky, a large ship slowly emerged. A jet-black ship, clearly triangular in appearance, like a large arrow. In the anterior part, just at the tip, it had three structures in the form of giant elongated extensions, one leading to the upper zone, and two oriented towards the lower part, at an angle of fifteen degrees above the vertical. The ship carried a symbol composed of three octagons encircling a cube, and was three kilometers long. It quickly approached the area where the humans were, clearly controlled by the human holding the small control console in her hands. The spacecraft was parked about six hundred meters high, while a small auxiliary spacecraft, a transport shuttle, emerged from its interior, going ashore.
Helen and two other humans entered the shuttle, which rose and disappeared on the horizon. She smiled after sitting in front of the wheelchair. Everything was intact, almost new. Meanwhile, the main triangular spacecraft was occupied by the others by a second shuttle. They went to different areas of the ship, as if they knew it perfectly well.
“We're going after Ronta,” Helen ordered from the shuttle. Unlike the ship, the shuttle was white and had large transparent shields that allowed the inside to be seen.
The shuttle spotted Ronta flying at high altitude. His intercom was still blocked, probably because of some unknown human ship system, if that ship was human. Suddenly, the human shuttle vanished. Ronta was surprised. Where did that human shuttle go? Just at that moment, the shuttle reappeared near Ronta, at high altitude. They followed him as he tried to escape, but it was evident that his effort was futile. Only one LauKlar ship could help, but communication was still cut off. Helen, to her surprise, mentally communicated with him.
“Ronta, it's Helen.”
“I know,” responded Ronta, still trying to escape instinctively, while the shuttle and he flew parallel at high altitude. “You can talk with your mind. You tricked us.” Helen ignored the comment.
“I don't want to hurt you,” Helen said in a conciliatory tone. “But I can't let you go. I want to know your species in detail. Your species as it is now. Come with us, and I assure you we won't do you any harm. You'll be our guest.”
“A moment ago, you tried to kill me.”
“It's true. And it was a mistake. We'll need a few days to get ready.”
“Get ready? What's the point?”
“Never mind what for. My people were going to shoot you because they know you shouldn't tell anyone. But it would have been a mistake. You're much more useful to us alive and on our ship. Yours will worry about you and your disappearance, it is clear, and they will almost breathe relieved by the fact that we have disappeared. But no matter what investigation they initiate to locate you, they will not consider any possibility that is dangerous to us. When they understand the truth, it will be too late.”
“What truth?”
“That we're back. And that we are the herald of your destruction, and of the end of your civilization. We are the Fenrir loosed from the rope that has kept us silent, and that opens its jaws. You, Ronta, are witness: you are witnessing the beginning of the end of your species...”
Helen's shuttle moved smoothly a few meters from Ronta, as they both flew near the border with space, where oxygen is minimal. LauKlars can fly at high altitudes and with very little oxygen for a while, thanks to their mental capacity, but then require considerable time to recover. As she spoke, Helen had put on a space suit, and stepped out of the shuttle. Her second, Scott, who had climbed up with her, approached the glass to watch Helen approach the huge LauKlar, while Ronta looked at her with distrust. And fear.
“Freyja!” Scott exclaimed. “Come back! He can attack you at any time!”
“He won't do it,” answered Helen. “This species does not behave like this. Not now.” Helen went back to Ronta.
“Ronta, I want to insist: Come with us. Look at it from this point of view: you can learn a lot from us, and we from you. We'll have to prepare a cockpit for you on our ship to get that awesome body in, but we'll adapt. Besides, we have no choice. To be honest, it's your only chance. But I don't want to hurt you.”
“You threaten my species, and you say you won't hurt me.”
“There may be minimal hope of survival for some of you, Ronta. But it will only be in very specific conditions. Conditions to be established by us, of course.”
“I could attack you now.”
“I don't think so. I have a personal weapon on my wrist. An antimatter beam from our ship could be detected at this distance by your ships. But my personal weapon, which I have here, will do the job smoothly. That's why I was forced out. Also, to get close
to you, and see that I'm being completely honest. You could try to kill me now, it's true, and you're not going to do it. I won’t hurt you, as long as you come with us.”
“In my civilization kidnapping is a thing of the past. For thousands of years, we have put aside violence and punishment. We have weapons and combat capabilities, but limited to self-defense. But we will fight you, if necessary. A single ship with a handful of humans is no danger to my people. It is you who must surrender yourselves. And you will be treated with respect.” Helen smiled.
“I can see it's impossible to dialogue with you. You don't understand anything I say. And you have no idea, you or your species, of the future that awaits you. You're very, very wrong, Ronta. But, I'm afraid, you won't be able to witness the facts. As they said in my day, resistance is futile. Either you submit, or you won't stand a chance.”
“Opportunity? With a gun pointed at me, what chance do I have?”
“Just one: come with us.”
“I don't know what Deblar has done waking you up after all these years. But the High Council will stop you. You don't stand a chance.”
“We'll see,” Helen replied coldly as she lifted her weapon.
The last thing Ronta's yellow eyes saw was a blue line leading toward him, and disintegrating his body molecule by molecule. After a few seconds, there was only a trace of blue smoke and some ashes in the faint wind of the planet's old atmosphere.
Helen stepped back into the shuttle, and quickly removed her suit. At that point, communication came from the planet.
“Helen? I'm Karl.”
“Go ahead Karl, it's Helen. What's going on.”
“Did you manage to catch the pilot?”
“It was not possible. He refused to enter the ship, and we must leave the area now. I had to finish him off.”
“It doesn't matter.”