The Circle and Star

by John Foster

  It was left to Theo to explain the progress that they had made towards understanding and running the Cyclops. They stood in a small room that Theo had taken over as his work area and then the subject of the weapon had come up.

  “Well, that’s great news about operating the Cyclops, but any progress on finding the weapon?” asked West.

  “No, Madison’s continuing to search for answers but so far hasn’t found one bit of information about it. She thinks either it’s not a weapon, or its information is hidden and guarded.”

  “Not a weapon? How could that be? I mean if it’s not a weapon what is it?”

  “The question of the day, and you’re not the first to ask it. Madison is a scientist and when the answer isn’t apparent, her response has been to question the assumptions. The operative assumption is that we’re looking for a weapon and there’s not one bit of information about any weapon other than ship defense and that’s pretty much plasma weapons and some type of torpedo.”

  West leaned against the wall and put his hand to his chin and looked perplexed. “Not a weapon? Now that’s interesting.”

  “Yeah, it was a stunner when she proposed it. The only thing she has found that takes up a lot of space is some type of gravity force projection that the ship can use. She figures it’s some kind of aid in propulsion, sort of like an after burner to give the ship some kick but she dropped her analysis of it when it appeared that it wasn’t what we were looking for.”

  “Hmmm, well we know that the Kaa were big into manipulating gravity, much to our delight, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find they have all kinds of tricks they could do with it.”

  West paused and looked up at Theo, “Has Madison had any changes in her thoughts about, well, me?”

  Theo looked up at West and shook his head, “No she’s still pretty upset and Dickens seems to be taking advantage of her anger towards you. She mentioned that he was making various ‘personal and business proposals to her and she wasn’t keen on them.”

  “Damn that Dickens, he is such a rat,” said West, slamming his fist into the palm of his hand.

  MADISON CAPTURED

  The troopers were busy at the various stations on the Cyclops bridge and nervously worked under the watchful eye of Dragaan who stood impassively next to the Captain’s chair. The signal officer entered the bridge, approached Dragaan, and saluted, “Priority message Sir.”

  “Read it.”

  “Still looking for weapon but am sure that woman has knowledge of it. Out.”

  Dragaan pondered the message and said, “No return message.” The officer saluted and walked off the bridge.

  Walking around the bridge calmed Dragaan and while the ship wasn’t flying, it was still relaxing to be on a bridge even though an alien one. He considered the message from Dickens and had all but forgotten him since the commissar was gone. Dickens’s presence as a spy had been useful to divert and distract the commissar from Dragaan’s goals and aims and now that that officer was gone, Dickens usefulness had thinned. Still the agent could be useful and Dragaan had exhausted the technological competence of his men who were not scientists but front line officers and soldiers. The earth woman would provide the scientific expertise to allow him to fly the ship and use the weapon on Terra. The Sovar Committee when they had learned of the weapon and its capabilities had directed Dragaan to capture it, place it aboard a captured Soshi ship, and then turn it on the moon base of Terra. The attack would provoke a war between the Soshi and Terra creating a two-front war that they hoped the Soshi would not recover from. The Nafti had promised that they would provide a compliant Soshi but that had proven to be a false claim. It turns out that the Soshi could not be converted as promised. Dragaan wasn’t sure what process the Nafti had used but wondered if the Sovar might prove to be more successful using the old tried and true means of torture. As for the captured Soshi ship that hadn’t happened as hoped either. The few ships that had been captured were so damaged that they couldn’t be flown anywhere much less to the Terran home system. Fortunately, the Cyclops was similar enough to the Soshi ships that no one on Terra would realize that the attacking ship wasn’t actually Soshi. After the Moon Base had been destroyed the Sovar would offer their support and help Terra by joining with them to fight the traitorous Soshi. Dragaan considered the plan melodramatic but the war wasn’t going well, drastic action was called for, and this was the hand he was dealt. Dragaan decided the time for action was now. Delay would just increase the potential for other factors to change events in an unwelcome way.

  “Communications?” said Dragaan.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “Ask the Captain of the Commandos to meet me in my quarters.”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  Dragaan walked off the bridge to the quarters that West had once occupied.

  The door promptly sounded after Dragaan had entered and he said, “Enter.”

  The door opened and Captain Petrov entered, saluted, and said, “You sent for me?”

  “Yes, how many effectives do we have now?”

  “About 50 soldiers, mostly commandoes and some ship’s marines.”

  “How many marines?”

  “There are 15,” said Petrov looking around the quarters as Dragaan had his back turned from him.

  “I want you to take a small party of your best commandoes and search the lower levels for the Terrans whom I suspect are either hiding or engaged in some type of research down there. You are not to be seen and you are not to engage the enemy. For now, I want to know where they are and how many of them there are. We are particularly interested in one woman named Madison. If you discover her whereabouts you will inform me immediately. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, commander, as you order. Will there be anything else?”

  “No, you may go and leave as soon as possible.”

  Petrov saluted and left the room.

  Dragaan tapped the table in front of him and pondered his mission, reconnaissance first, disrupt second, kidnap the woman third, interrogate her, transit to the Terran Moon, destroy the moon base, and escape. It was a simple plan and thus had a good chance of success.

  Madison was grateful that West and the others had returned and while two of the crew had been injured, they would survive until West found another way to risk their lives. She knew West cared for his crew and that her thoughts were unfair, but the shock of losing Thomas had shaken her to the core. She shook her head to clear it of these distractions. It wasn’t going to do her or anyone else any good if she didn’t find that weapon. She was sure in her heart that the Sovar wouldn’t let them go with a pat on the back, more likely a plasma bolt to the head as that dead body at the bottom of the red building shaft testified. She considered what would happen if they didn’t find the weapon and thought it likely that the Sovar would continue to muster forces here until they could inundate the planet with scientific teams and find it. The Sovar on the other hand had the Soshi to goad them into finding the weapon as soon as possible and Madison felt it unlikely that they were sitting around waiting for that lightening bolt to strike. It was probable that the Sovar were looking for them now or it would only be a matter of time before they did so, then there would be another fight, and more than likely, more lives lost. The stakes were higher now with the Terrans having the knowledge to fly the Cyclops but couldn’t access it, the Sovar having the ship but not being able to fly it, and the Soshi blissfully unaware that a deadly game of hide and seek was taking place literally at their planetary feet. To the Soshi Jo-Tene was literally a galactic pawn to be traded or lost in achieving some strategic victory. Right now, they were fighting over it simply because the Sovar wanted it. It was only a matter of time before their ships were sent elsewhere.

  The weapon information was the key to getting off this planet because without it none of the parties would leave willingly. It was up to Madison to find it and she knew she was the one who could do it quickest. But where was it? She had butted her head against too many de
ad ends and knew that something was logically wrong about her approach or her assumptions. She packed up her few data pads and decided to find another place to work. It was too noisy in the large classroom area and there were too many questions from well-meaning but oblivious crew that interrupted her. She wandered to the back of the classroom area and looked it over. There were many doors in this area and she used her HDA to scan the door symbols for translation. Most of them were laboratories for testing of machinery and the rest were some type of biological facility. The use of biology in their machinery fascinated Madison as no other aspect of Kaa culture did, not even the weapon. They used biology in ways that Terra had not even considered and they used it as tools and part of their everyday lives. She wondered if the biological aspect was key to the weapon? It seemed unlikely but the other more conventional searches had proven fruitless and she would rather spend some time learning more about it. She opened a door and went in, the lights turned on and the room was similar to the others but had large glass like tubes in it that were human size and she wondered if that was a coincidence. She turned on one of the view screens in the center of the room and ran her HDA to translate as it went into a video mode and showed outlines of some biological part of the ship. She sat down and watched it. About an hour later she became convinced that there was more to the biology than she had believed. The Kaa used it for medical purposes as the brown stuff testified to, but also in some psychological function too. It was fascinating how they transformed living organisms into machinery which became part of the tools they used. They were self-repairing and could operate independently as well make repairs to space vehicles, in space. She realized that mining would be a safer occupation and much more efficient with these semi-robotic creatures. There were greater treasures here than any of them realized. By the end of the second video, Madison realized that additional detailed information about the biological processes were available in another series of laboratories in another section of the research facilities. According to the map presented at the end of the last video, it was just a few hundred meters farther into the museum complex. No one had gone that far and, while Madison was tempted to tell someone where she was going, she decided she wouldn’t be gone that long and it wasn’t worth bothering someone for something so trivial. Just as she was about to leave, Martin walked in, and looking around a second, caught sight of her and said, “Hey, where you going?”

  “I’m about to go down the corridor to check out some new information. I’ll be back in a second.”

  “You’re not supposed to be wandering around on your own, you’re too important,” said Martin, his young boyish smile looking quite charming.

  Madison smiled, “Okay, so I’ll make you my official protector, but you’ll have to be quiet while I’m doing my research and not ask any questions. Is that a deal?”

  Martin looked doubtful but said, “Okay, you want me to tell Theo where we are going?”

  “No, Theo and West are figuring out what to do next and I’m not going to bother them, particularly when you’re going to be here to protect me.”

  “Okay, but we do need to be careful, if the lizard men are about, then I’m not going to be much help because I’m running the other way,” said Martin smiling.

  Madison nodded and then considered that she could probably run faster than Martin if the lizard men as he called them were chasing them. She opened the door to the corridor and walked out looking both ways down the corridor. There was nothing there but a small round black object at the end of the corridor. It looked out of place but considering how old this place was, it was likely that there were a lot of things in the corridors that had gotten thrown down here. She shivered when she thought of the body at the shaft and made an effort to turn her thoughts to the manner at hand.

  It hadn’t take Captain Petrov long before he had determined where the earth people had established themselves. The Terrans were not careful with their wireless transmissions and one of Petrov’s technicians had simply scanned the frequencies, determined where they originated, where they were received, overlaid them on a grid, and established the area the enemy was in. After Petrov had finished checking out the perimeter of the area the Terrans had staked out for their quarters and work area he was certain he had the area completely sealed off. He had his men place little ball like motion detector imagers in the event that the Terrans left their core area. In the three hours, they had been down here, they hadn’t gotten any alarms that the earth people had left the section of rooms that they were now inhabiting or using. Petrov wasn’t certain why they were there but that wasn’t his concern. He now had the area pinned down and the second step was to locate and isolate this Madison woman. Petrov had a picture of her that Dragaan’s spy had provided and she was beautiful. Petrov thought that he had few tasks serving under Dragaan that would be as rewarding as this one was bound to be. Dragaan had promised that he would send some spider drones down and then Petrov would send them into the core Terran area and he would be able to find this Madison person and effect a plan to take her. The drones were micro video drones that could walk up walls and ceilings and transmit optical and audio signals along a special fiber optics cable that was as thin as a spider thread hence the name. The beauty of these devices was that they were virtually undetectable because they didn’t broadcast signals that could be intercepted but their speed was slow and took time to situate themselves before any useful information would be forthcoming.

  “Captain Petrov? We have an alarm on the far western corridor. Two Terrans were observed moving across the hall and down to another room. One is male and the other might be your woman subject,” said the Sargent.

  Petrov jumped up from where he had been musing and ran to their base station where the various monitors were tied into. The trooper dialed the video up again and played it for him.

  Petrov watched it twice His face lit up, and he hit his fist into his palm as he stood up from being bent over the little table. Looking at the surveillance operator, he said, “We’ve got her and away from the others too! Alert Dragaan and tell him I’m going to take her now.” Looking to the Sargent he said, “You take three men and head to the corridor near the main red building shaft and guard it in the event that the rest of the Terrans become alerted and try to oppose us.”

  The Sergeant saluted and picking three men ran in the opposite direction while the operator ran to alert Dragaan.

  Petrov had five commandoes with him which he considered more than sufficient to handle the lone security man with Madison. The detail having formed around him, Petrov gave a hand signal and they moved off for the far western passageway. The team moved quietly. Kidnapping wasn’t their normal mission, killing was, but this was close enough. All of their weapons were set to the lowest setting as Petrov was adamant that the female was not to be injured in any way. He told them to remember the body at the bottom of the shaft and if they didn’t want to end up like that they should be careful.

  Madison and Martin had walked directly to the room she was interested in as she had loaded the map into her HDA. She sat Martin down in a chair next to a wall, and admonished him to sit still and keep his eyes open. He smiled at her and was about to say something when she put her finger to his lips and said, “No more talking.” Smiling he watched her turn away and walk to a viewing station, sit down, and start to open the Kaa files. Martin pushed back the chair so that he could lean against the wall with his head back and took out his HDA and tapped the device screen activating the ear phones that were implanted in his ears and listened to his favorite music, his eyes half closed as the sound washed over him. Madison turned and watched him for a few seconds, smiled, and turned back to the view screen. This area’s information was more about their use of gravity which seemed to have greater import to them than she would have thought but she had run out of other options. She considered it likely she was on a wild goose chase but the other leads had failed and she would run all the options down. Unlike most of the other viewing
information she had seen, this material was different, it was more like demonstrations of gravity applications in real world scenarios. As she watched, she realized that they were using directed gravity beams to move objects first in small scale and then in ever increasing size to propel objects. She had seen this earlier and had considered it some type of turbo acceleration for their space ships. This was a video, apparently live action, of the device being demonstrated and it was somewhat different than she had initially realized. In the video segment, she was now watching a Cyclops like ship propelling a satellite into space at tremendous speed from the center of its hub. This was where she expected the weapon to be projected from and wondered if they were related but she quickly realized that at this scale of projection even a satellite with a nuclear pay load wasn’t enough to blow up a planet. No, it had to be something else. The next video started to play and it showed the Kaa space ship again but this time there was no satellite and she wondered what the next demonstration would be. She heard the door open behind her and she turned to see who the visitor was and her mouth opened in a silent scream as she saw a group of black uniformed Sovar commandoes enter the room, their weapons raised, and then shoot Martin as he looked at them in astonishment. He crumpled and fell to the floor. Madison regained her voice and took another breath to yell and a heavy black glove clamped over her mouth and a small round device was placed next to her ear and she could feel it vibrating as she lost consciousness.