by David Buck
Traders’ Scourge
Part Two, Maveen Offer
Book One of the Carinae Sector series
by David Buck, 2012
Revised 20th March 2013
The author assumes copyright and all rights relating to this publication. All characters depicted are fictional and the story line is a work of fiction.
The novel is written in Commonwealth English.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This novel is dedicated with love to my wife Nicola and our four children.
A special thank you goes to Simon Haynes, Stephen Dedman and Michael Foster.
Cover design by Luke Harris from Chameleon Print Design.
The story continues from part one, Alien Flight….
Chapter 1
Deep in the gaseous depths of Neptune, aboard a massive floating platform, the colonists continued to slumber in hibernation dictated by their biology. The sole automated sentinel checked the distance, the class, and the species register of the new arrival in the solar system. The sentinel then assigned the incoming Barus ship as a low priority risk. The colony shelters stretched out in ordered rows, and nearby, under powerful cloaked shields, were laid five large partially reassembled silver spheres.
Since the colonists had slumbered, the work on the spheres was frozen until the colonists could awaken and resume their work. Both the shelters and the silver spheres where nestled on the surface of a vast platform slung underneath massive bags of hydrogen. The platform, measuring six kilometres on every edge, automatically adjusted for buoyancy, as it floated effortlessly in a calmer layer of Neptune’s deep atmosphere.
Many kilometres overhead, the eternal supersonic winds raced around the planet. The sentinel decided that the colonists could not be bothered for every ship that entered the system, before again deactivating to limit the chances of discovery.
***
Gindane monitored the status of her research ship for several minutes as they entered the Solar system. The Barus researcher had been going over various scenarios in a bid to establish how she would deal with the Traders once she encountered them. She knew from her own training that aggressively confronting them was not a good idea. Her research ship was a destroyer sized auxiliary vessel well equipped to deal with a frigate or two, or a minimal attack.
A Trader flying wing, with a dozen or more sneak ships, was a vastly different proposition from what she had been informed about in various briefings. Gindane was now well aware that a Trader flying wing was quite capable of severely handling a Barus cruiser squadron if it was cornered. Only the military might of either the Vorinne or the Zronte themselves was capable of taking a Trader flying wing down in single ship to single ship battle. There was much more information about the tactics used to battle Traders, but she now lost interest quickly.
Gindane was a senior researcher and junior diplomat, not a fleet commander despite her rank. If they wanted the Traders dealt with by her command then it would be by cajoling and diplomacy, she had long ago decided to herself. Besides she knew the Traders were unlikely just to attack the humans. Indeed for an independent race they did try to uphold edicts, especially those of the Deltas Vass, the spiritual keepers of the Carinae Sector. Gindane left the bridge and headed for her quarters, she would continue studying the human language, and to devise the methods she would use to deal with the Trader ship.
***
Captain Narindestat continued to busy himself with ensuring his ship was ready for atmospheric flight. He deeply felt the loss of his son, who ordinarily would be helping him now, and would have eventually succeeded him as captain of the Illuria. The captain still did not know how he would tell his wife at the loss of their only son when the Illuria eventually returned to their home base.
‘Some things are never meant to be experienced by parents.’
He considered sadly as he continued to the next task to monitor the status reports of the sneak ships. As all the Trader ships had surfaced, the captain had the engineers run tests of the atmospheric engines for the main ship, and they discovered that several of the larger thrusters were not working. Also the engineers now had damage warnings for the port aero spike engine. The captain had the sense to check the aero spike engine himself, and after a bit of thought he ordered.
‘Slowly drop the outside shield on the upper leading edge here…’
And he gave the full designation for the shield he wanted altered as he set an outside camera to show a view of the aero spike engine. A decent plume of water erupted from the aero spike engine, and an engineer verified that most of the static warnings for the engine had stopped. Captain Narindestat had to stop looking around the bridge for his son as he commented.
‘A sizeable amount of water leaked between the shields and caused a large pressure reading in the aero spike engine when the ship surfaced from the deeper water. We dropped the shield and the pressure was released.’
The captain paused to review further console readings, and then made his evaluation to the bridge crew.
‘This is also what I suspect the same effect is hampering our thrusters as well. Now as soon as we are airborne I want the crew secured and the lower hatches opened in these locations. If the shields in these places are also down then any remaining water should drain from the ship easily.’
The three engineers on the bridge acknowledged the captain’s instructions, as the acting navigation officer took the Illuria up four hundred metres into the air.
‘Garendestat would usually do this job.’
Thought Narindestat to himself, and he noticed some of the bridge crew look over, and he knew that they would be thinking the same thing. Briefly the captain considered the sick crew members in the rest of the ship, as he hoped an additional exposure to the air of this planet would not be fatal. He was running out of time and options, not to mention air supplies, and he could not empty the water out of his ship without admitting the air of Earth onto his ship.
A strange odour of salt spray permeated the ship as the engineers dropped the shields, and opened the upper hatches to let in the fresh air of Earth. Captain Narindestat was still using the remote monitoring system and he watched as the engineers had the sense to quickly check the non working thrusters. A flurry of shouted commands followed, with the engineers getting several of the thrusters online by dropping the shields to allow the water to drain away.
***
Steve spoke to Mark, both about the alien, who was now fully awake again, and the state on the helicopter.
‘The alien is looking a bit worse for wear, but they must be as tough as anything to survive as this one did underwater. Also with your fuel state, it could take several minutes to transfer the alien into the runabout.’
Mark was about to reply when he exclaimed. ‘Will you look to the north Steve; it must be the main ship.’ Dan also exclaimed at the same time. ‘Oh my lord will you look at the size of their ship.’
Steve looked to the side away from the alien, and had a clear view of the sky for a several kilometres to the north on the low swell. He could see several smaller ships that flew slowly around a much larger ship that was shaped like a huge crescent moon well over five hundred metres from wingtip to wingtip.
‘A massive flying
wing…’
He evaluated to the two people in the helicopter, as the main ship slowly gained altitude on a series of vertical jets. The ship seemed to flicker in places and a steady stream of water poured from open hatches along the bottom edge of the ship. Steve could see three attachment pylons on each side of the bottom of the wing, and given the number of smaller ships around, he thought there would be more attachments points on the top of the ship as well.
‘Dan those smaller ships must have fixed dock points on the larger ship when they travel in space.’
He was then aware of a massive arm raised over his chest with the four fingered hand pointing at the ship, and the alien seemed to become momentarily more agitated. Steve gave the alien a reassuring pat on his good shoulder as he floated next to him. He pointed at the main ship as well and spoke.
‘We will see what we can do and I don’t know if you can understand me, but I understand that you want to go to your ship.’
The alien now cradled his bad arm with his good arm, as Steve settled back to await the imminent arrival of the runabout.
Garendestat relaxed in the water as he fought off the dizziness and extreme fatigue caused by the climb up the heavy cable with only one good arm. Hopefully once the Illuria had landed then a sneak ship would return to secure the research rig and find him. He was grateful to the human for saving his life, and they certainly seemed capable of quick action he decided.
‘But are they capable of giving himself, the other Traders and the Maveen a fair hearing?’
He then asked himself, as he again fought down the burning pains in his glimmer tattoos.
***
Omerio considered the small planet in front of him with unease, even though the Tilmud ships had moved out of the system earlier. The planet was about the same size and temperature as the planet the Traders and the Jerecab had later visited in the first system when he had met with the Trader ship. Omerio also noted that the three Tilmud ships had earlier gone into a highly elliptical transfer orbit around the planet, and the Trader pilot now moved in cautiously to try and establish what they had been doing. He patiently worked out the area of the planet underneath the three ships at their closest approach, and established a geosynchronous orbit above the same stretch of the planet.
Omerio still could not risk active scans but he carefully searched over the planet below and sent the terrain analysis to the ships computer. The Tilmud had chosen this section of the planet carefully, as it possessed the largest frozen lake by far on the small planet. He carefully worked the passive scans along the edge of the frozen lake, and found several discrepancies. He then launched his smallest atmospheric probe on a one way flight down to the frozen lake.
The micro probe left his ship and angled down to the planet’s surface, and Omerio instructed the probe to retain the aero shield. He wanted no traces of his presence near the planet, so he waited patiently as the probe deployed and began to search the several sites that he had indentified as interesting. Within several minutes the micro probe had discovered several aluminium canisters within hundreds of meters of each other. The probe angled over to a canister that appeared to have ruptured on landing.
Omerio, looking at the video feed from the probe, stifled an oath as he recognised the contents of the fractured canister.
‘Even they would not do such a thing as this, it is indeed a thing of great evil they do with that ship.’
The now crestfallen and alarmed Barus trader gathered all the remote intelligence he could about the vials and added the information to his report. As his ship left orbit around the unknown small planet, Omerio released a small message drone to go into high orbit and broadcast a quarantine signal. He slowly followed the trail of the now departed Tilmud ships out of the system, with the faint signals of the quarantine drone etched in his mind as he calculated the next jump.
***
The Barus research ship was taking a carefully selected curved course into the inner parts of the Sol system. Under galactic edicts the cloaked ship was constrained from making active scans of the star system, and Gindane was keen to avoid being detected. In her quarters, Gindane was working frantically on her language skills. To try and understand, let alone speak, the human language called English was difficult even after months of research.
She knew that when it came to learning the strange languages of new worlds, only the Jerecab, the Deltas Vass, and the Tilmud were slower. She then thought sarcastically.
‘The Zronte and Vorinne of course would never condescend to learn the language of a new race, which was what the junior vassal races themselves are for as far as they were concerned.’
Gindane thought darkly that the overlords must have known about the poor dynamic between Barus and new languages, and then given the Barus roles in trade and diplomacy, just to irk them. The Barus for their part accepted their roles and endeavoured to learn about new races and their languages to the best of their abilities. The Barus researcher was well aware that the independent races were adept at learning new languages, especially the Traders. The outcast races like the Maveen were reputed to be very quick learners of new languages as well.
Stoically, Gindane spoke again to one of her junior researchers in English.
‘Good morning, I am Shapalif Gindane from Barus and I am needing to talk to some one in hlada about the Traders landed on your planet.’
The junior researcher rolled her eyes and suppressed a giggle as she replied in Barus.
‘Commander, you said Shapalif and hlada instead of commander and power. Also I think ‘am needing’ has to be changed to ‘need’. But you are getting better, so please once again repeat after me.’
Gindane suppressed an oath of embarrassment and continued to practice her English. Unfortunately the research associate could not do the message or later negotiations. The edicts were quite succinct in that area as Gindane knew too well. Patiently she listened further to the notes her crew had compiled on the English language and started again.
***
Captain Narindestat viewed the current status of his ship with some satisfaction, as the engineers had managed to bring online several thrusters to improve the control of direction on the ship. They were now slowly flying north east towards a series of small islands, and three sneak ships had gone forward again to select the landing side. The captain quickly rejected a landing site off shore on an under water sand bank inside the massive reef.
The sand bank was certainly large enough, but the problems he had recently with the landing skids becoming stuck meant that the captain would like to land the Illuria on a solid surface. He looked patiently at the information he was seeing from the sneak ships when he spotted what he sought.
‘Sneak ship seven, take another pass over that small island and give me a topology of the island and the rock shelf in the water please.’
As the information came in the captain silently overlaid an outline of the Trader ship on the island and rock shelf until he got the landing site he was chasing. He needed a location were the sneak ships could land as well, and the small island itself was perfect. He then turned to the navigation officer with instructions.
‘Pilot, please bring her over to this course and slow the forward movement by a quarter. I have sent you the landing orientation of the ship as we have to be mindful of the circumstances of our landing.’
The navigation officer, another friend of Garendestat, slowed the ship down immediately and perused the ordered landing geometry of the ship. As smile came to the junior officer as he understood his captain’s intent.
‘Yes captain, the landing will be as you specify to within two meters. We will make a course change shortly and bring the Illuria down direct from about a hundred metres altitude with no lateral drift.’
The order for landing the main ship was sent to the sneak ships, and most of them assumed a defensive posture orbiting the ship at a distance. Sneak ships one and seven instead took up hovering positions on either side of the approach
path, and navigational lasers from the smaller ships relayed information back to the Illuria. The Trader ship turned slowly without banking at the low altitude and began the final approach to the landing site. Once the ship had no forward motion, the pilot lowered the two main landing skids and went to lower the two smaller landing posts when the captain spoke again.
‘Pilot, we will just use the forward landing post as most of the weight will be on the rock shelf with the main skids. Also I don’t want any part of the main ship in contact with the island except for the landing ramp.’
The specified landing skids deployed, the Illuria slowly came down vertically. The huge thrusters blasting columns of steam and sand away from the ship as it neared the sea. Now his view was obscured by steam and debris, but the pilot calmly held the ship level until contact was registered on the landing skids. Slowly the ship’s thrusters’ power was reduced and the ship settled down onto the landing skids. Once the Illuria was fully down and no lateral motion was detected in the landing, the pilot quickly shut down the thrusters and the ship gave a small shiver, but remained in place.
Captain Narindestat turned to the pilot.
‘Well done, you are within two meters and we did not drift once, I am really impressed.’
Other members of the bridge crew gave polite nods of thanks to the pilot as the captain advised of his next orders.
‘I want a full report, especially damage, of all ships. I want sneak ships one and seven patrolling over our location, sneak ship eight can make a patrol further out to the west. All deployed sneak ships are to have their auto defences set to live as I am sick of being shot at by the humans. ’