STARWEB 1-5

by M. Modak

  Emyeu sat in the Captain’s Chair listening privately to Drahca in her ear. The 360-degree view of the moon base gave her full observation of a vast facility that was too quiet. She replied, “You believe it’s a trick of some kind? What do you think he means to do?”

  “Or has already done…Everything is a trick with Sleven.” He paused as he considered the vicious extremes Sleven would go through to accomplish his goals, “Elohim only knows what he has done.”

  The new crystals they were delivering were thousands of times more powerful than the energy sources that contemporary ships and cities now used. The government believed this technology was capable of transforming all civilization. It would bring travel time of most spaceflights between star systems within weeks and days, rather than years or months. With them, spacecraft could go farther and faster, remote planets could operate independently for centuries with just one of the new crystals. And, although weapons larger than planetary protection units were banned, leaders from the Plasma Drilling industries, manufactures’ of scientific instruments and advanced medical devices were all waiting here to see this miracle for themselves.

  Emyeu didn’t give her flight plan or hale the moon when she had drifted by inertia alone into the planetary system. She didn’t want to scare her small crew. Drahca had warned her that the exiles had extra sensory abilities that varied between them. Some could hear everything that happened on the ship, others could see through most kinds of matter. He didn’t’ believe any of them were skilled or calm enough for remote viewing but if they worked at it, they could do it.

  Drahca had lowered his energy to a weak cloaking field that stayed around himself, Emyeu and the crew. It concealed his energy signature and absorbed their conversations. As she prepared to leave, she told the crew a cover story. They were to go to their rooms on the moon base, rest and wait for tomorrow’s meeting. Sleven’s team needed to be alone as they prepared the New Crystals for transport. The preparation would require the ship’s systems to temporary hibernate. They should take a break during the blackout and prepare for tomorrows presentation. Drahca wouldn’t be able to hide the whole crew’s emotions from Sleven for very long. If the other crewmembers started talking, or worse fearing the exiles, they would all be in imminent danger.

  “I don’t want to be seen or heard,” Drahca had warned her. “If anyone is around when the Dragon Exiles are shown for who they really are, blood thirsty monsters, hostages will be taken and mauled, dead bodies will pile up.”

  Even though it was early in the morning, and all but a few of the residents were sleeping, there should have been hundreds of people at work. The spacecraft’s main doors opened and Drahca, Emyeu and the crew quietly walked down the ramp under his cloak. They were relieved to find that there were no guards stationed where they had docked, especially because the base police had no weapons. This was not the time or place for a confrontation; they would get hurt.

  Before landing, she had put a delay on all the locks to the Exiles cabins and shut down all the power to the ship’s communicators along. The Crystal Engine room went silent. They were now in lock-down. Then she set the ship’s systems on automatic and a vacuum formed throughout the rest of the ship. It would take a few minutes for the exiles to notice that they were locked in their cabins and when they accessed the computer, an emergency message would tell them that there had been a hull breach and a vacuum had formed. They would have to stay in their rooms or suffocate.

  Emyeu and Drahca went inside the dock’s main pressure locks as the crew headed to their rooms. They accessed the moon base communications systems and called Sleven.

  “Captain Emyeu, “A large redheaded man with a deep and reassuring voice spoke, “I didn’t see you arrive. My crew informed me that you would be coming sometime tomorrow but I don’t… see your spacecraft at any of the standard docking stations.”

  “Sleven, it’s so good to see you. We landed at the ship’s repair dock, near the Mining station on pad 75. I had a minor computer malfunction and I need to have it looked at.”

  He spoke a little suspiciously, “I haven’t heard from my crew yet, is everything okay?”

  “Yes were all fine, the transmitter is part of the problem. How long until you can meet us here?

  Sleven glanced down and a hologram and the complex appeared before him. The computer interfaced with his brain showing an internal map giving him the memory of the quickest route to the dock she had described; “ETA 15minutes.” ‘He said, “I have to get something from my quarters. I’ll be there in 25 minutes.”

  “That’s fine, we’ll start unloading. See you when you get here…” she paused then added, “Is my father or any of the representatives going to be joining you?”

  A quick flash of anger came across his face so fast she almost didn’t believe she had seen it. “They are all… busy, at the moment.”

  Emyeu’s heart froze. Knowing what these creatures were capable of had tripled her fears; now she was on the brink of panic. Drahca squeezed her hand gently and she started to turn toward him but continued the motion as if she had to wipe her mouth. From the moment she had met these people, she had never trusted them. They were always a little too polite and condescending. Just being in their presence had always given her chills. To the exiles, it was as if the survey team, that had crashed landed on their planet, owed them something more than the rescue.

  “Okay,” she said with renewed cheerfulness, “I’ll see them soon enough.” Sleven nodded and the hologram blinked out.

  “He knows something is wrong,” Drahca said.

  “How, I kept my facial expression placid and my breathing was even. I know he did something that my father and the representatives won’t like. Did you see his face change when I brought them up?”

  “Yes, that’s because dragons are not use to hiding their emotions.”

  “How could he know something’s wrong?” She asked.

  “He can feel your emotions almost as easily as I can.”

  “I thought you were covering my emotions.”

  “I am but I couldn’t make you emotionally blank…like a robot. We are listening to your emotions as much your words. If I had cut you off from him completely then he would have been instantly on guard. I restrained your natural auric field just enough so he wouldn’t detect your extreme fear.

  “What should we do then?”

  “Stick with the plan. He’s a little suspicious but he is over confident in himself and the others. I sensed little caution in him, but he is one to strike first and ask questions later. I kept that in mind when I made the plan.” He put his hand on her shoulder and extended the full cloaking field around her again. Together they walked past several security checkpoints and surveillance recorders. When they were alone again in the hallway she asked, “I was sure the infrared detectors would have lit up when we past that check point.”

  “I can totally mask my signature. Light, sound, heat or cold are not visible. Remember, I was a Blue Dragon for ten thousand years…” He smiled, “But I do have trouble covering smells.”

  She wanted to ask him more about it. He had told her everything, laid it all down from the start, but there was still so much she wanted to know about him. It would have to wait for another time.

  They rushed down endless tube-shaped hallways. Everything was quiet. When they arrived at the other end of the terminal, a sleepy looking man was just leaving. The door to the repair dock was starting to slide closed. Drahca picked Emyeu up and held her under one arm, feet dangling, and ran for the door, catching it just before it slid shut. As the door paused, an alarm buzzed and the man who had exited turned around in surprise. Emyeu’s foot had touched the door. Drahca continued slipping through with her under his arm and let the door shut.

  He waited for a moment to see if the man would return to investigate what had happened but after a few seconds, they were in the clear. He glanced around the large dock. It had taken them five minutes to reach the area, which gave them about
fifteen minutes to get ready. Drahca didn’t need that long.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened and Sleven walked in and looked at the large empty space before him. He walked forward, passing a large stack of containers to his right and WHAM! Drahca’s invisible fist punched him in the face. He sent a surge of bright energy into his eyes, temporally blinding him. He slowed all the energy surrounding Sleven to an almost stand still. Crystals of ice formed around him, like billowing clouds turning into solid rock. He and Yrrep had used the same trick the last time to capture him.

  The dampening field around the exiles trapped on the ship dropped. Sleven jerked involuntarily at the revelation. He could hear them clearly now, screaming curses meant to warn him. It was too late. The crystals forming around his body pressed hard against his flesh and bones, drawing on his energy as they grew. He fumed, Drahca has done it again. The Grand Master was the only one who could have manipulated energy so precisely. For a brief second he admired his enemy and wished they were on the same side. But he knew that would never happen. He told himself that this was just a setback. One day, he would have his revenge.

  “Now!” Drahca said. Emyeu activated the autopilot, restoring the ships systems. Within a minute, the ship landed on the nearby dock. Drahca could feel all the exiles inside raging against their imprisonment. He shook his head in disbelief, “You’re sure that ship will hold them?”

  “I can kiss a star with that ship,” she said, “Nothing outside a point blank atomic blast can fracture its hull or doors. My daddy bought this ship. He’s a little over protective. As we discussed earlier, that ship was designed for deep space runs in search of new energy sources. I’m not sure how powerful these exiles are. I’d guess we could keep them imprisoned for at least a few days.”

  “What about the crystals inside the energy chamber, are they protected?”

  “You know for a 10,000 year old dragon you can be thick headed.”

  A smile spread across his face, “That is true, but these people are not fish in a jar. These people are capable of everything I am. I’m just a lot older and more experienced than they are. I don’t know what they were up to but if they decided to harm your people, it would be a lot worse than a nuclear chain reaction going off in one of your cities. The whole galaxy would be in danger!”

  “My love, she said as she walked over to where Sleven stood encased in crystal. “As I already told you, the doors, walls, hell the whole ship is made to contain a massive energy release. If all of them combined their forces, as you suggested, they would still need an anti-laser to cut through those walls.” She looked Sleven in the eyes. Near his eye sockets, she could see small crystals growing out from the larger one that surrounded his whole body propping his eyelids open like tiny fingers. Sleven’s black pupils turned on her and she backed away. She didn’t need to be from TOL to feel his naked hatred.

  Drahca looked away for a brief moment as he calculated the combined force of all the exiles trapped in her ship. “Taken what you’ve just said, we only have a few hours. I’ll need to go person to person and secure them individually.” He took a deep breath. He had used a considerable amount of energy to cloak himself, Emyeu and the crew. Simulating the background noise from the Crystal Engines to cover the trapped exiles and creating Sleven’s crystal cell took the last of his reserves. He needed water before he could use more of his power. He looked back at Emyeu, “Lover, when we’re done I must find a place to keep them all. A place more secure than the world you found us on. It will have to be a prison where they cannot be freed again.

  “A place where they can do no harm.”

  She held her tongue for a long moment then said, “On some of our worlds they would get the death penalty for what you said they’ve done. Why don’t you just kill them?”

  There wasn’t malice in her question. She felt as smooth as cold steel as she waited for his answer. He said, “I’m concerned about that. I’ve studied your government and your Justice System. I’ve seen how different it is expressed throughout the separated worlds. Geography determines justice here. To them, Justice seems to be about punishment, disregarding the conditions of life and the societies, which each of us are born in.”

  “But why don’t you kill them?”

  “You want the shot or long answer?”

  Emyeu glanced at the hate filled eyes staring down at her and she took an unconscious step closer to Drahca. She said, “I want you best answer.”

  “What has that act gotten your people so far? Many of the worlds in this galaxy ignore its own history, dismissing all responsibility for past inflictions upon its own people. They ignore injustices they have caused against their own innocents, which may have led to this aberrant behavior. What punishment should your governments suffer if a higher power passed judgment against them with the same measure they used? Their idea of justice is obsessed with pure cause and effect. However, that wouldn’t be so bad if it looked at all the causes. Your government’s practice of justice can only be described as pathological.”

  “So… we shouldn’t punish those who do evil?” she asked.

  “In the ultimate sense, there is no real evil, just those who see it differently. Beings that do what we call evil are either acting out their ignorance of life or they are showing us ours. They serve us by giving us a choice. Who are we now?

  “All punishments are opinions of good and evil handed down by those who also see it differently. We should not execute those we don't need to because in doing so we identify ourselves as equal to that which we condemn. They killed, stole and destroyed life and in doing so they identified themselves. Who we are, as a people, in relationship to them is the highest question. If we simply kill them when it is not necessary, then we have identified ourselves too.

  In time, the judgments of, “evil” made now will be reviewed by our descendants. They will in turn judge most of those conclusions as, intolerance, laziness and hatred against those considered weak. Some of the things judged as evil today our children will abide or consider their highest ideas. Slavery, alternate religions, benign sexual preferences, even where a person sat in a space transport had dire outcomes to those found guilty.

  “Today we see the tolerance of these things as high-minded resulting in fairness and peace. How can we all get along in the face of this ignorance, ignorance of what later generations will accept as “good” is the deeper question we are trying to find. If we achieve this at some basic level we will open the door for those to come to create a universe where they can grow beyond our immature conflicts and design ways of being we can only dream of.

  “I don’t have all the answers. Long ago my world made a huge mistake with the children of the Dark foe and we are all suffering the outcome of that ignorance. We should learn from that mistake rather than repeat it.

  “Healing wounds is far more effective at stopping further injury than using your energy to gain vengeance. Besides, most things you call “good” today were proclaimed as evil, punishable by death, not long ago. Consider your negative feelings toward the actions of the old justice system, when extra planetary marriages carried the death penalty for those they caught. What do you think they would do to us if you and I lived back then? Who is right and who is wrong, time will tell? What we do in the meantime will set the stage for the next generation. Each new generation is so caught-up in actions of their forefathers that they hardly get a chance to examine their own behaviors. The real question is not about evil, we keep changing our minds about that. The question is what kind of people are we choosing to become? What problems will we leave for the next generation? The answers will be found in what works and what doesn't work. What makes us all grater and what perpetuates “evil” verses what eliminates its basic causes.

  “When looked at objectively, most thoughts, words and deeds can be seen for what they are. Do they accomplish their intended outcome? Governments are supposed to protect the people from outside attack, mediate jurisdictional conflicts and allow societies
to develop naturally. How well your governments shows all the facts to its people; rather than obstructing the facts and how it allows them to make changes, is the measuring stick for their effective governance. If a government is simply doing the same things over and over again but only getting the same result, then that government is insane.”Emyeu chewed her lower lip. “So… we shouldn’t kill them because their evil acts are… just…a different way to see things?”

  “Are some people naturally stronger than others? There will always be those who will do well under almost any circumstance while others will fail no matter what advantage you give to them. We do not see the reasons of the individual soul. Who are we to judge right and wrong, guilt and innocence in others?

  “What about war?” She asked.

  “In war we must do what we must do to defeat the enemy, even as we remember that we are all one. But remember what history exposes, killing produces more killing. With this in mind, killing should be reserved for when there is no other option. When doing anything less than killing will result in the immediate loss of freedom, cause death or usher in total chaos, then killing is obviously your only choice.”