Scavengers: Dark Dreams

by Allan J. Stark

  Scavengers

  Dark Dreams

  by

  Allan J. Stark

  @ 2016 by Allan J. Stark

  All rights reserved

  Author: Allan J. Stark

  Contact details: allanjstark@aol.com

  Andreas Adamus

  Appenzellerstr. 123

  81475 Munich, Germany

  SCAVENGERS

  Dark Dreams

  by

  Allan J. Stark

  Dark Dreams

  Time: 24 June 11,375 ptc. (Pangalactic Time Calculation)

  Chapter 1

  Nea did not know Spiky Jones. At first he worked as a scout on Sculpa Trax. Spiky was more than twice as old as Nea. She estimated him to be about 350 years old. He wasn't slim, or fat. He had broad, athletic shoulders and an angular face, framed by a reddish beard. He had trimmed his thinning hair to a few millimeters, just like a typical military crew cut. One eye was dull, the other bright blue. A light scar ran from his right cheek diagonally across his mouth, down to his chin, where it peeked through his short stubble . Together, he and Nea had just succeeded in eliminating an insectoid polyorganism that had settled in a freighter.

  His appearance and age did not suggest it, but Spiky was very able in his job. He mastered his weapons perfectly, knew how to use them effectively, and was able to adapt to his hunting partner. To have such a good companion was a lucky but seldom thing. That is why Nea preferred to work alone. Spiky had positively surprised her. If Nea’s boss, Sam Blumfeldt, were to ask her for her opinion, she could only give a good report.

  The insulation-field projectors, which generated a barrier around the freighter on the airfield, were dismantled. The security team stowed their machines and made ready for their departure. Soon Nea and Spiky would be alone, among all the spaceships under the skies of the spaceport world, where the air traffic never stopped.

  The sun was shining. It was hot. Under the belly of the Nova, Nea’s ship, the two sat and shared their lunch. Spiky had prepared it by himself and it tasted fabulous.

  “What’s that again?”, Nea asked.

  Spiky swallowed the last bite before he answered by pointing at several areas of her plate with his fork.

  “Beff lamo,” he explained. “Poto fri, grot blu and saraway sauce.”

  “Tastes great.”

  He smiled contentedly. “I’m delighted if anyone can appreciate that.” He drank a sip of red wine, sparkling in a real glass. “Most of them only poke the pseudo-meat into themselves.”

  Would he be disappointed if he learned that she had no problems eating a tasty portion of pseudo-meat? Nea thought it was better to leave him in the dark about that fact for the time they may spend together as colleagues.

  “Where did you learn that?”, Nea wanted to know.

  “I’ve been a cook on various ships,” he replied.

  “But not on big ships, am I right?”, Nea asked. There was little need for cooks on the huge liners or battleships. The preparation of food was entirely in the hands of computers and they use only pseudo-meat.

  “I was traveling with smaller companies,” he replied curtly. “You still need cooks there. If you value it.”

  “You were with rich people?”, Nea guessed, but somehow she sensed that there must be more about Spiky. He seemed too daring to be only a cook for boring high society people. By the way, he handled his weapons in perfect routine. He must have always remained in practice.

  “Yes,” he answered, in an annoyed undertone, letting Nea know not to ask any further.

  But she would have liked to know why he now made his money by working as a scout. “You replaced the cooking spoon with a rifle.”

  “You noticed that, for sure!”, he laughed briefly. “I can do both.”

  “Were you once a soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you are determined to be on your own. Don’t like to respond to orders anymore?”, Nea asked, still curious.

  Spiky did not answer. But for some moments, he stared into his glass. He seemed to ponder if he should drink a sip and risk loosening his lips. “My career has had an extraordinary history,” he said ambiguously. “As a scout, I can work mostly alone and do not have to stay long in one place. That makes me...” He searched for the right words. “...I cannot handle having a well-structured life.”

  “I understand. It’s the same with me,” Nea said lightly. “I also need changes. Most call it chaos. Not everybody can join me on my path.”

  Spike’s expression darkened somehow. “I’m not concerned about change.” His voice had assumed something menacing. “I wish I was. Sometimes I envy people who can give their life a structure and settle.”

  He doesn't look or sound like a man who can look back on a quiet and simple past. Nor like someone who wants to talk about it. Nea regretted asking. It would have been better to have stuck with small talk, but she had no talent for that kind of light conversation. She always had to get to the bottom of things. She wanted to know who she was confronting, and that behavior often complicated her dealings in relationships with others.

  “There were a few problems, on the last ship,” he said. “Subsequently I made myself self-employed. For everyone's sake.”

  Nea's curiosity grew with every word. “On Scutra there are many who want to leave something behind for whatever reasons. It’s the perfect place for those kind of people.”

  He shook his head and took a strong sip. ”I did not say I wanted to leave something behind.”

  “It was only a guess.”

  “Actually, I'm here to find something.”

  For someone who wanted to hide his true motives, he did everything to keep Nea’s curiosity alive. “And what would that be?”

  “Enlightenment,” was his concise reply.

  Nea was more than amazed. “Then you’d better go to Botray or Skurak. The temple schools there are supposed to be great and have helped many to overcome their restlessness.”

  Spiky seemed to take her words seriously and Nea knew she had made a disrespectful step. “I’m sorry,” she hurried to say. “But here you will find only landing fields, workshops, shipyards, and millions of spaceships of all kinds. The galaxy calls Scutra the restless world. No sea, no forests. Nothing that could help you to find enough quietness to provide your spirituality. Sculpa Trax is a huge, planetary space port. That’s it.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” His tone was rough. He emptied his glass and poured himself another one. “When you're here for so long, you'll know what you're saying about this planet, aside from its fitting name.”

  Yes, Nea knew the stories. Until recently, she had looked at them as complete nonsense, for a long time. Now, however, she was ready to believe it. But still, much seemed to her to be nothing more than a joke. “You mean there is a whole world hidden under our feet?” She could not suppress a grin. “That someone has installed the landing fields to conceal an old and spooky civilization under it?”

  “Or protect us from it,” Spiky replied.

  “I’m sure there are innumerable artifacts buried under our feet,” Nea replied. “But this is the case on almost all worlds in Asgaroon. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “Here it is different,” the man insisted. “Here it is ... it’s different.”

  Nea guessed that he must have experienced something strange with the artefacts of the Old Kingdom. He was not alone in that. Many people argued that there is something special about the Azzamari, as they called the legacies from the time of Sargon the Dragon. Some spoke of a kind of magic that remain in the relics. But that was too far-fetched for Nea. She did not want to lose ground. But still, now she wanted to know what Spiky had experienced.

 
“Are you confronting the Azzamari?” She asked interestedly, trying to avoid any sarcasm.

  He answered with a counterquestion. “Have you ever heard about the Coleman incident?”

  The name did ring a bell in Nea’s mind.

  “It wasn’t not long ago,” Spiky Jones continued. “There was a museum. And a rich guy who delivered relics to it. The thieves targeted him and his treasures. But in the end they chose the wrong guy to fool with.” He took another sip and looked lost in thought. “The ships were full of stuff from the Old Kingdom. And when they flew through the world-jumper gates, the relics started going crazy. The whole coup went wrong. Coleman recovered his belongings and took the ships abandoned by the thieves. Lucky guy.”

  Now Nea remembered. It had been a curiously planned robbery, which however had gone wrong for unknown reasons.

  She looked at Spiky suspiciously. How did he know what really happened? Nea did not have the impression about him that he was a man who loves to fantasize or try to be important by telling creepy stuff. Maybe he knew someone who belonged to the gang or he was involved in the heist in some other way.

  “They told me,” he continued, not explaining who “they” w ere, “that the so-called magic is related to the Fayroo. There are nine Fayroo. This must have a reason.”

  The Fayroo, also called Fays, were star portals, which were artefacts, maybe remaining from the time of Sargon the Dragon. No one knew who had built them, but they had been used since time immemorial for traveling to various star systems. You just had to open up your mind and allow the gatekeepers – the Kiray – to pull the name of the target system from your brain. In order to do that, the pilot has to whisper its name to allow the Kiray to comprehend it from a focused mind.

  Nea hated this type of travel and avoided these gateways whenever it was possible. Others, however, were almost addicted to the connection with the Kiray.

  “Only here will I find answers,” Spiky said, as if to himself. “I’ll get them. Even if it takes me my whole life.”

  “Keep it to yourself,” Nea warned. “People do not like these stories. Who wants to know about the goblin in the cellar? Or be reminded about him?”

  Spiky grinned. “Thanks for the warning. But I always want to look behind the figurative curtain. It also determines my life and I don’t care if it is dangerous to look for answers if it helps me to understand. I don’t wanna die as a fool who does not know anything. Every scout has experience with the Azzamari. And every one of us wants to know if magic is the trick. If only I could get into such a Fayroo.” He emptied the glass and gazed at Nea, like someone who recognized her inner person. “Then you could get some answers.”

  Nea had to admit that he had indeed looked through her. And it occurred to her that there was a way to get answers, following the way Spiky had spoken about things. She decided to go on a journey and return to a star system that she had visited a couple of years ago.

  Chapter 2

  Nea tightened her seatbelt. The end of the gate passage quickly approached and she felt that the speed of the Nova had already diminished. However, this could only be pure imagination. Inside the area between the portals, there was no such thing as speed. Whatever was happening in the tunnel between the worlds, the laws of known reality were removed. Scientists have been racking their brains about how to describe this space – this dimension.

  The luminous streaks that wrapped the Nova faded rapidly. The next moment, the ship was again surrounded by the deep black of space and the gentle gloom of shimmering stars. The exit from the tunnel was rude and Nea had trouble gaining control of the ship again, but it was only half as bad as a few years before. Also then she had entered the normal room through this particular jumping gate. At that time she had controlled the giant Rimmon of the scavenger captain Zebulon Greenwood. The mighty ship had fought with all its might against Nea’s attempts to get it back on track after the gate had spit it out like a rotten cherry. This time Nea was prepared.

  Ogo, who was sitting next to her, went to work as usual without saying a word about the rough arrival. With mechanical routine, he checked the environment and the status of the ship.

  “It went well,” Nea says, just to break the silence. But the big robot did not care about the young woman. Instead, he took care of the needs of the Nova, without any response to Nea’s words.

  “I want to warn you again,” the robot suddenly snarled and flicked a few switches. “What you want to do is stupidity.”

  “Curiosity,” Nea scolded. “And without this human quality, you would not even exist. Curious people are good people. So just leave me alone. I know well enough that I am taking a risk and I must concentrate.”

  Nea brought the ship to a full stop and turned it one hundred and eighty degrees. In front of the cockpit window now stood the gate through which they had just come. It was shining brightly in the sunlight. A huge ring of shimmering, sparkling gold, embedded in the deep black of the universe. It looked almost pristine. Only in some areas was the color a little dull. But only on closer inspection could these spots have been seen.

  Nea pushed the thrust lever forward and pulled it back again. A tiny, barely visible flame flashed in the two engines of the Nova, pushing the spaceship forward. Gradually the shining Fayroo moved closer. The gate showed an irregular pattern, the countless metal plates formed on the surface. Jibs, antennas, and towers rose in some parts of the Fayroo and projected several hundred meters into space, like huge spikes. The Nova glided nearer and nearer, passing them like a tiny fish on a coral bank, and approached the ring-shaped main body of the world-jumper portal unperturbed. It was not one of the gigantic gates commonly found in civilized systems. Even the smallest Fayroo in the Sculpa Trax System was at least three times as big as this one.

  Nea looked at the monitor, which showed the signals coming from the optical sensors. “I see a lot of damage. That’s unusual.”

  She looked out the window and stared at the Fayroo for a while with irritation. She had never seen one of these portals that was in such a regrettable state, and the nearer the Nova came, the more the impression of decay intensified. There were more worn-out areas on it than seen from a distance. Several parts seemed corroded, as if they had been destroyed by acid. Here and there, Nea noticed cracks and holes in the surface, as if meteorites had hit the Fay.

  Ogo snapped loudly, while activating some hidden weapons of the ship and increasing the shield’s strength. He gave Nea a brief telepathic impulse. Just for caution, Nea interpreted the information she received.

  “All right,” she replied. “Hold back from any intension to provoke the Fay. I do not want any problems with the thing. It’s kind enough to let us get this close.”

  Nea watched the surrounding space by viewing some monitors, looking out of the window and then back to the tactical displays. After all, it was not safe to cross the prescribed distance to a gate and to approach it unsolicited. The guards never slept and usually acted immediately when a ship came to close without intending to make passage. Sometimes it could be that the keeper himself responded and hurled the troublemaker into nothingness, or elsewhere. However, it hadn’t happened for centuries, so that this kind of incident had already staked a place in the realm of legends. However, there was always still the risk that the Nova could be blasted into eternal darkness. But Nea was lucky. Nothing happened. No guard ships attacked, no gatekeeper touched the Nova with invisible fingers to tear her apart or throw them into the empty space of an unknown dimension. The little ship came closer and closer to the gate, as careful as a fly crawling on the edge of a spider’s web. Close to a gaping hole in the skin of the Fayroo, the ship stopped.

  Nea used the searchlights on the bow to take a look at the interior through the huge crack and could see into countless floors and corridors. She followed the circular light spot, which reminded her of a glowing finger running over sharp, tattered metal edges. When she had seen enough and the Kirays had still failed to act, her decision was made to
go further.

  “Up to here, things have gone pretty well,” Nea whispered, like she was afraid someone might listen.

  “Sounds like you fell from a roof.” Ogo seldom sent her so clearly formulated words into her thoughts, instead of a mental image.

  “Nonsense,” Nea replied. “I’ll be fine.” She undid her belt and slipped out of the chair. Nea was ready to take a spacewalk. In the chamber of one of the locks she found space suits in all sorts of designs, for different requirements. From heavy models, which looked like armor , to skin-tight variants for simple work. She chose the latter model, shouldered a jet pack, and put on a helmet. The closures on the neck ring snapped. Oxygen poured in. A spotlight above the helmet’s visor flared up and swamped the environment in dazzling brightness. Quickly, Nea lowered the light down to a suitable level and opened the door to the airlock. After she entered the narrow tube, she locked the door and informed Ogo that she was ready to leave the ship. Looking at the two prouque pistols on her left and right hips, she made sure that they couldn’t slip out of their holsters . She hoped that it would not be necessary to use them. But as always, you had to be prepared for anything if you dare to penetrate old wrecks. Finally, she opened a valve and the air escaped from the chamber. When the pressure had fallen to zero, Ogo released the security lock. Silently, the heavy door slid aside. After it had disappeared into the wall, the gently glowing gold of the leaping gate took Nea’s entire field of view. The sight was overwhelming and the idea that no one had ever been so close to a Fayroo brought tears to her eyes. Nea’s heart struck so violently in a touch of reverence that she thought it was going to hammer against her breastbone. But the curiosity to find out what was inside a Fayroo and what secrets were to be found there defeated the nascent fears. She peered out and tried to grasp the dimension of the mighty ring.

  “I register strong physical reactions,” she heard Ogo say through her helmet speaker. “Is everything OK?”