With little more to say, it was, “good luck and farewell” as once again we boarded a ship bound for planet fall. Pvt. Doug Jonson got the job of Comm. Officer on this drop; Capt. Pierce preferred to keep me free to assist in negotiations with the rebel colonists. “This needs a cool head, and you’ve shown that on the earlier missions, Lieutenant Duncan,” he had said by way of announcing my promotion to the team, just before our departure. I have to admit that I was completely flummoxed by his display of trust and I sure as hell intended to earn the trust he had shown in me. I felt a momentary surge of sadness that my father wasn’t here, and I could see Capt. Pierce feeling the same thing; but it was only an instant, and then passed.
Roger Turley was raised from Corporal to Sergeant in the same little ceremony; he obviously needed to be able to take charge of a team of his own, and he was definitely qualified. We’d have plenty of time to press on our new insignias on the journey to Sne-az.
After brief congratulations from those nearest both of us, we had boarded, and takeoff was moments away. The launch bay doors opened as soon as all personnel were cleared, and the hum of the gyros were joined by the vibration of the engines; then we shot out of the bay like a bullet. I can never get too much of that feeling, though less than from a planet surface, still a genuine, first class, RUSH!
“Eeeeeee-Haaaaaaa!” Hooted Ira, from a couple of rows back. “That’s what I call power.” He wasn’t alone in that emotion, which echoed through the compartment, especially from the first-timers.
Our trip to the planet was going to take almost three days from our current position, so we all settled in to routines with pre-assigned duties to perform, only half of which were really necessary; mostly servicing equipment and reading info about our destination and mission plan as much as could be preplanned. Doc Lee was once again assigned to us as mission specialist, in charge of all medical and non medical research; she now had more direct contact with the out worlds than any other scientist on all of the Astro II. This was also my first assignment in a strictly military leadership position, although I shared that as junior to Lt. Olga Konigsberg once again; she having more experience than I in that capacity. I was glad to have her there, for that very reason.
Lt. Joseph Bradford was our pilot as on the previous mission and Sgt. John Hensley as Co-pilot, with Alice Sanger as Astrogator. Alice was from our main navigation staff on the Astro II, also an astronomer of some notoriety. On this mission it was hoped Alice could make some observations of the neighboring planetary bodies to help in assessing the relationships between them over longer periods of time. There was something going on that they’d not been able to pinpoint as yet, and the general consensus was that we were missing a large piece of the puzzle.
Sally Chen was our cook on this trip; the Captain thought we’d better have a real cook and helper this time since we were a larger group and it would avoid chaos. Her assistant was, believe it or not named, John Smith; I’m not kidding, that’s his real name! He’d been in school with me and we had the same birthday, which was all I really knew about him; he having lived in one of the mining communities and tended to hang in completely different circles than I did. He seemed like a good guy, and he proved to be an excellent cook. Personally I couldn’t boil water without the synthesizer.
Perhaps at this point I should explain that during the twelve plus generations of living in our small world, we’d felt that aggressive behavior was, as a matter of necessity, pretty much a thing of the past. The shock of these rebels having actually shot and even killed a fellow colonist was hard to accept as anything other than an accident. That was the reason we called in to the colonials on the ground as we approached, and were stunned when we were warned by them not to land, but to go and leave them alone, or else. The only one not surprised was Roger, who said that after the fight to steal the shuttles, we’d better be prepared to fight to the death, because they would!
They had landed near our original landing spot, perhaps to take advantage of the previous contact made with the Fenninz. We ignored their warning and approached to land near them. There was a flash across our bow and the warning was given again from the forces on the ground.
“Our Laze Cannon is aimed for a hit the next time.” The voice warned.
“What the hell was that; Laze Cannon?” Asked Brad. “We don’t have such a thing as any kind of cannon,” he said as he veered away from our intended landing target.
“It appears they’ve adapted a meteor deflector cannon from the Astro II for use against us,” said Mike Dermot. “They must have loaded one from the store room, as a matter of fact; there were several of them there.”
“This certainly alters our plans,” I said, as Brad began searching for a new spot, not too far away. “Mike; what would be the range of their cannons?” I asked, assuming they’d have more than one.
“It could be as much as ten thousand miles in space, but in the atmosphere it’s probably about ten miles, considering the air resistance, and so on,” he answered. “Hopefully they haven’t adapted the mounts to aim the thing horizontally,” he added grimly.
“Damn!” I grimaced. “I don’t suppose we have what we need to build some sort of shield generator?”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t have the schematics for something like that, but we can call the Astro, and maybe they can help us on that score.”
It seemed the only thing to do, so Doug set up the link to the ship for us to fill the Captain in on the details.
“Well, doesn’t that about take the cake.” Capt. Pierce swore. “We’ve underestimated them at every crossing so far.”
“We’ve only seen one ship at that location.” Olga reported. I’d completely failed to notice that. Where could the other ship be, stalking us? I certainly hoped we hadn’t flown into a trap. There wasn’t much we could do about it now.
“There’s a clearing large enough for us to land only about two miles west of the village,” informed Brad. “Do you want me to put us down there?” He asked.
“Go ahead,” said Olga. “We can’t just hang in the air forever.” As we were dropping, I saw a group of Fenninz heading toward our intended landing site in obvious anticipation of our landing.
“I hope there still happy to see us,” I said to Olga; and to the rest for that matter. The vegetation around our landing site wasn’t as thick as at the other site, for which I was grateful. “At least Turley won’t be able to sneak up on us here,” I added.
“Too right,” said Nettie, joining us at the front of the ship, and sounding worried. “I’ve never dealt with violent personalities like this before; but in the old days, studies showed that aggression of this kind could be extremely volatile; takes almost nothing to ignite serious responses.” As psychologist for our expedition, it was Nettie’s job to give us this sort of insight, but I couldn’t help wishing she was wrong.
“Astro II calling the Homer.” Came a voice over the comm system.
“Homer to Astro II.” Responded Doug. “Go ahead.”
“This is Professor Sang Sun, from engineering; is Mike Dermot in hearing range?” He asked.
“Right here, Professor,” answered Mike; having been his student for several years, he knew the professor well.
“Mike; you have an Identical cannon built into the nose of the ship; it’s never been wired in, there wasn’t time. If you pull the bottom panel from the command console, you should be able to remove it and install it on the collapsible rover that’s in the hold. Its power supply should be adequate, but if not, you can find a way to boost it,” Prof. Sun told him.
“Can do,” said Mike confidently. “Thanks Professor.”
“Let us know when you’re finished.” Ordered Capt. Pierce. “And keep a good watch posted; we can’t afford to trust the rebels at all, after their little display.” As if we needed a warning after our little run in. We signed off and Mike set to work immediately with a couple of the other crew members assisting him; several were also engineering students,
though somewhat younger and still in the mandatory part of their service.
“The natives are at the edge of the forest,” announced Brad. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
As official leader of this mission, Olga began selecting who would go out for the first contact with the Fenninz waiting outside the ship. I made the suggestion that she, as mission leader, stay on board to watch before subjecting herself to possible harm. She didn’t like the idea at all, but couldn’t argue with the logic; so I got to lead the small group to leave the ship. “I hate it when you’re right,” she smiled, as we prepared to exit. “Be careful.”
As we walked down the ramp from our ship, a difference in the group of little Fenninz was suddenly obvious to me. The apparent leader was wearing my bracelet around his long skinny neck; it was a perfect fit. The odd thing was that many of the others were wearing imitations of it, mostly loops of plant fibers linked together to make a similar appearance. Also, some were wearing imitations of the ring Nettie had exchanged for the sizuz during that hysterical last visit. The rings were hung on strings around their necks, being too big for their fingers. I assumed the leader, wearing the original bracelet, was the same creature I had dealt with on our previous visit. They all looked exactly alike on first glance, however the more I looked at them, the little subtle differences began to stand out; differences in the nostril slits and even exact shape of their eyes varied slightly. I realized I would eventually be able to distinguish one from the other easily given enough exposure.
With a bit of gesturing which I won’t bother to describe, I was able to exchange personal names with the leader, whose name as close as I could pronounce was Osssss; which I made simply Oz. I thought it almost funny; here I was in the land of Oz. The owner of Nettie’s ring was Diz, who kept eyeing Nettie with a degree of nervousness; probably remembering the chaos that ended our last visit. After a short time that tension seemed to dissipate and we began to gather info about the other ships’ dealings with them.
I’ve avoided giving a firsthand type of account here because of the difficulty in gathering the info in this fashion, but as close as we could gather, the other group was trying to negotiate some sort of terms under which the Fenninz would help them in return for tidbits of technology. The Fenninz were interested in gaining that technology and pretty much had already agreed to do what they could to get it.
Most of the help already performed by the Fenninz was of a pure light duty labor variety and very little, if anything, had come back in their direction. Already it seemed, the Fenninz were starting to feel this imbalance in their relationship, and trouble was brewing within their ranks over whether to let them stay or try to drive them out. I didn’t think they had much chance of doing that, with their little spears against the formidable weapons of colonists. That was the first time I looked around in a long time. There were four of the Dragons now in the crowd around us. The dragons were deep in conversation with the Fenninz, and I realized for the first time that these creatures were intelligent, and that our previous mission had ended with one of them being killed by one of our exploration teams.
Oz introduced one of them to me; his name was Gerbz. The Dragons, as we were calling them, were called the Lembroz. They were of a peaceful nature, as long as you weren’t part of their diet as were the Mulz—their name for the Hippo-Cows. This discovery made me wonder at the behavior of the Dragon who had attacked Hester; but then it occurred to me how alien and frightening we must have seemed to it, interrupting its dinner as we had. In a fight-or-flight situation that Lembroz had decided to fight, and lost. I watched warily, but none of our new contacts seemed aware of that encounter or its consequences. I certainly wasn’t about to bring it up.
In addition to the Fenninz and Lembroz, there were a large number of other creatures on the planet we hadn’t seen yet, though most were small and not sentient, and of little consequence from our perspective.
The Lembroz were intelligent but not technological because of their inability to handle things, having no opposing digits on their hands with which to work, but apparently they had a good rapport with the Fenninz and the Fenninz made many thing in return for the use of their strength and help against the occasional attack from neighboring tribes, apparently rare and usually in time of drought or some other natural disaster in another region, driving another tribe to desperate actions. I wondered if the other colonists new any of this, and that they could be in more danger than they realized.
Most of this information was gathered over several hours of time through a lot of gestures and drawing pictures in the dirt; which the Fenninz did very well. They had a real flare and appreciation for the arts and later we would see that they did much drawing and painting in their fashion. Music was another story: strictly vocal. When they heard some of our music, we had to show them a few musical instruments; but that’s a story that had no bearing on the current situation.
That long conversation, primarily between Oz and me, but including input from my crew and Oz’s people, culminated in the moment when the revelation—and I do mean revelation, in the strongest sense of the word. The Fenninz had been visited before and had record of it in a cave in the woods, perhaps a half hours’ walk through the woods. Eight of us went with them to the cave, the home of some of the Lembroz. The drawings were not of humans like us, but similar, and very old, which we verified later with some of the dyes scraped from a corner of one of the drawings. They were at least 3,000 years old by Earth years, but it was the first key to where the relic we had found came from.
I gave my best effort to show Oz we would not be staying and that we intended to convince the others to leave with us. I think Oz understood at least part of what I told him, because he seemed sad about our leaving. To be honest, I was a little sorry we’d be leaving myself, these guys were so kind and gentle by nature, even the Lembroz had a gentle nature. One of them let Hester, after a brief hesitation, lean on its shoulder to cross over a particularly slippery log in our trek through the woods. The irony wasn’t lost on any of us, but we didn’t intend to share our first lamentable encounter with a dragon.
The wall paintings of the craft of the aliens from that long-gone age looked like one of our early rockets from the very early days of space exploration, when we were limited to our inner solar system; that was the most perplexing thing to me. It just didn’t make sense that somebody could have traveled to this world in such a primitive craft; but I supposed the drawing probably wasn’t that accurate.
We returned to the ship to check on progress there and saw that Mike and his helpers had completed removing the weapon and were mounting it on the collapsible vehicle.
“Nearly ready,” he said as we arrived. “I sure hope we don’t need to use it.”
“I would hate to have the Fenninz see us killing each other.” I returned. “It would be a real bad example for a supposedly superior race to display,” I said, and meant it. Then I wondered truly how superiority was supposed to be measured, and had to stop that train of thought; it was too philosophical for the situation at hand.
“Doug has made contact with the Turley’s ship,” Olga cut in, “and they’re willing to meet with us on neutral turf, but they say the other ship went to check out the other continent. Wade’s with this group however, so this is the one we need to convince.”
“Where are we supposed to meet them, and do you think we can trust him?” I asked. “I don’t want to tip our hand about the weapon before we begin negotiations.”
“Neither do I,” said Olga. “But I damn sure don’t want it far away when we go to meet him. We’re to meet them at a small clearing just though the woods.” She said pointing toward the south east. “About 14:00 hours; so one hour from now. Roger will go with me and I think I would prefer it if you stay here with the gun crew, ready to come if we call for help.”
I had no choice but to agree, though I wasn’t too happy to see Nettie preparing to go along with several others. I knew there was no point in s
aying anything about it except to wish them luck. At least Nettie was wearing the head cam so I could see what was going on as they made their way to the rendezvous.
That was the first time I ever got to see a small herd of Mulz grazing in a small glade they passed on their way to the meeting with Turley; they looked just like any other herbivores I’d ever seen in documentaries from Earth.
They arrived at the rendezvous and found Turley and a half dozen others waiting for them. They had arranged a small folding table and chairs set up in meeting fashion, complete with pitchers of water and crystal goblets. It was a scene out of a documentary about a President meeting with visiting dignitaries. It was almost laughable; except, it was a clue as to how Turley was viewing himself, and that was dangerous. I began to realize how unbalanced his thinking had become, and I also became aware that his son knew it too.
He gave them a cordial welcome and invited them to sit and relax. They all sat, but I didn’t see any relaxing going on. Turley had several armed guards supervising both people and a few Fenninz, getting more chairs and pouring water like servants. Then I saw a situation I couldn’t ignore; two of the Fenninz were armed with Laze pistols! He was teaching them to fight on his behalf. I felt sick and wondered if Olga had noticed; I was sure she must have, I made mention of it to Nettie over the comm. and could tell she made a slight nod to acknowledge.
After the exchange of cordialities Turley asked, as if not aware, what we were doing in his domain?
“Your domain?” Responded Olga, in shock. “This planet is outside of the directive’s acceptable criteria. You can’t stay here, and you can’t arm the population with advanced weapons and technology, and you know it!” She’d obviously noticed the weapons as well. Olga’s voice was low, but very serious. She had an air of intense control that was compelling; however, not compelling enough for Turley.
Starborn Odyssey (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 1) Page 9