Consortium of Planets: Alien Test

by Wells, Jack

  “Dean!” Wystl screamed.

  “I thought you were supposed to freeze me, lady in red,” Svetlana said sarcastically.

  “You killed him!”

  “I doubt it,” Svetlana said flatly. “If his chin is as hard as the muscles in his back, it would take a rocket launcher to do that.” She looked appreciatively at Dean’s body. “Killing him would be such a waste.”

  “I don’t understand,” Wystl said. “You were just fighting with him.”

  Svetlana looked down at her white cover-up’s grass stains and dirty smudges. It had popped open during the fight, exposing her red bikini. She tied it closed again. “What, you can’t appreciate a hunk?”

  Wystl stared blankly at Svetlana, clearly not understanding the reference.

  “Put some ice on his chin and he’ll be fine. I gotta’ go,” Svetlana said flatly.

  She walked back to the idling vehicle and got in. I wonder if this thing can lay rubber. Then she asked herself, What did he mean “freeze her?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Consortia, Chn-maa Command Post:

  The converted storage closet was small. Its gray concrete walls and single bulb hanging from the high ceiling made it feel even tighter. Conlar, the Chn-maa’s newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Admirals, ignored the feeling and sat in a round table discussion with his two senior admirals. Tomorrow, they would take command of the Consortium’s first and second quadrant fleets – a total of five thousand capital ships.

  The soon-to-be commander of the first fleet, Admiral Sayhl spoke up.

  “The statues of Bany’r have been delivered.”

  “Statues for each ship that will assure Chn-maa visitors become Chn-maa captains,” Conlar added with an evil smile.

  “Are you certain their sensors won’t pick up the devices inside?” Admiral Stometa wanted to be sure. “What if they don’t allow shiny gold meter-tall statues to be placed on the bridge?”

  “Not only did Tilcas get Ban’yr to agree to statues on our ships, but he agreed to put statues on all four fleets,” Conlar explained triumphantly.

  “But we won’t have access to the third and fourth fleets,” Admiral Sayhl pointed out.

  Exasperation crept into Conlar’s voice. “You need to be more trusting. The statues for those fleets have been altered and are being synthesized right now. They will function as remotes and will be controlled from these tunnels.”

  Stometa and Sayhl could taste victory.

  “Conlar,” they chimed in unison, “It seems that we need two more admirals.”

  Warrior Caste citadel:

  Admiral Dracox, the Warrior Caste’s vice commander, paced around his desk like a caged nauler.

  I’m trapped in a strategically stupid plan.

  The forty ships in University hands were insignificant compared to the ten thousand total ships available in all four fleets, but the commandant had to have all the ships. It was bad enough to put Chn-maa on two fleets – he wanted their golden busts of his likeness on all the ships!

  Dracox’s office was only a few meters down the hall from the commandant, but it might as well have been on Earth in the Omega Quadrant for all the success he got trying to talk the commandant out of his folly.

  I can go to the Senate or continue to follow orders.

  He slumped into his chair and tried to think of a safer plan. They had already spent enough time and resources recalling the fleets from the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. There were so many capital and support ships orbiting Consortia that a four-light-seconds perimeter was established around the planet to reduce the congestion. Time was running out. If the forty ships were a threat, he would have inspiration to formulate a plan…but they weren’t a threat, so tactical insight was failing him.

  “Sir, Colonel Sodrew reporting for your command.”

  Dracox didn’t even get up from his desk; instead, he quickly inspected the colonel’s appearance as he stood in the hall, waiting to be invited in. Still distracted by the Chn-maa problem, Dracox left him in the doorway and answered him unenthusiastically.

  “Yes, yes. I need you to go to Earth and retrieve a Searcher named Wystl and pick up the Earth leader, Jonathan Visen. He’s at these coordinates. I don’t have a location on the Searcher, but Visen should know where she is – it is his planet, after all. Collect both of them immediately; the commandant wants Visen to stand before the Grand Senate in less than a cycle.”

  “Very good, sir,” Sodrew acknowledged from the hall and turned to leave.

  “There’s more.” The admiral stopped him. “Earth’s inhabitants look exactly like the Chn-maa.”

  “The terrorists, sir?!” He couldn’t cover up his surprise and disgust.

  “The Chn-maa are more than terrorists,” Dracox corrected. “The Humans on Earth are probably related to them in the far distant past, but their Chn-maa ancestors are no more. Brief your crew. I don’t want any Humans hurt. Just get in and get out. I want you back here before the commandant’s presentation to the Senate with Visen and the Searcher.” Dracox looked at his timer and then gravely at the colonel. “Your time melts away. Go!”

  Earth:

  Now that they had gotten away, Svetlana needed a place to talk to Martle and saw a cheap motel. Old and run-down, all six units faced the street. The unit at the far end had been converted into an office that the manager lived in. She walked into the tiny motel office and demanded a room.

  “How long will you be staying?” The skinny, stringy-haired clerk reacted nervously to her tone and struggled to keep his voice steady.

  “I haven’t decided yet, could be an hour, maybe a day. Just give me a damn room!”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am. Will it be just you, or are you expecting company?”

  Svetlana reached across the counter, grabbed him by the collar with both hands, and pulled him to her face. His feet dangled half a meter off the floor as he lay helpless across the counter.

  “You don’t hear very well.” She stared deep into his bloodshot eyes and then glanced at the keys hanging on the wall behind him. “I’m done talking with you.”

  She shoved him back across the counter and onto his feet. “If you say another word, I’ll rip out your tongue and clean out your ears with a ten-pound silver dart. Now, quietly hand me one of those keys.”

  As outrageous as it sounded, the clerk believed she could do what she claimed. He swallowed hard and nodded without a word. Svetlana grabbed the key from his shaking hand.

  It was a basic motel room: cheap oak laminate furniture and one small picture of a mountain stream above the bed. There was a front door and a bathroom door, but no closet. She closed the curtains for privacy and helped Martle to a bed that was too soft and worn from overuse. She poured some water for him and waited with anticipation as he drank.

  “It’s time for you to show me your proof.”

  “I don’t have it with me. It’s at the office. There are statements from witnesses, memos, a police report, and there are a couple of old pictures of the scene.”

  Svetlana stared at him unemotionally. “Can you make it to your office?”

  “I think so. The bleeding has stopped and I don’t feel dizzy anymore.”

  “Then let’s move out,” she said, anxious to know the truth.

  Svetlana sat at Martle’s desk in stony silence and studied the information about her parents’ death. Martle looked uncomfortable in a straight-back side-chair. He actually felt sorry for her. She finally looked up at him.

  “This is extensive. I don’t see how you could have doctored any of it. You must have been gathering it for a while.” “I had help. It’s all part of a case that I’ve have been building for a couple of years now against the chancellor. You and your parents are only three of many that he hurt with his ambition.”

  She nodded as the last bit of doubt vanished. “General, I think it’s time to visit the chancellor,” she said with malice.

  “Svetlana, we can’t kill him. He must stand trial so that
order is maintained and a successor can legally assume his role under a world constitution.”

  “Politics is for politicians. I don’t care about what they do. One is as bad as the next and nothing changes. Now, take me to his office, or I’ll go back and visit with your wife.”

  Martle looked into her eyes and knew that she would kill his wife without a second thought.

  Wystl held Dean and rocked back and forth. I need ice. The only ice she was familiar with from her studies of Earth was at the poles. She didn’t want to leave him, but maybe she had to go to one of the poles. She was so worried.

  “Dean. Dean.”

  Dean’s eyes finally opened about halfway and he groaned weakly, “I think she kicked my ass.”

  Wystl searched for the correct Human phrase and agreed. “She had your number.”

  He gently held his chin and carefully moved his jaw sideways to see if it still worked. It did, but a few of his teeth felt loose.

  “You were supposed to freeze her,” he said in obvious pain.

  “When you fell unconscious, I didn’t care about her anymore. I had to help you.”

  “Okay, let’s find out where she took the general.”

  Dean got up stiffly and guided Wystl toward the house’s double front doors. Wystl looked at him questioningly.

  “Generals have homing devices in their cars, so I’m hoping his wife can tell us where Svetlana took him.”

  They rang the bell, and after a short delay, a middle-aged woman opened the door. Her hair and makeup were perfect. Her dress was white with soft yellow daises growing out of the hem. She took a minute and then recognition lit up her face.

  “Millie, you look great,” Dean began for her.

  “I wish I could say the same for you!” she said, shocked at his bruises and torn clothing. “What happened to you? Do you need a doctor?”

  Dean shook his head and grunted softly, “I’ll be fine after a shower. I just had a little misunderstanding.”

  Millie could see that it was much more than a simple disagreement. She didn’t believe him but knew that people in the Corps were generally tight-lipped and didn’t go in for details. Also, they actually enjoyed fighting and wore their scars with honor. After a few drinks at a cocktail party, scars were all they talked about in great detail. There was no point in continuing to press him for an explanation or if he needed medical care.

  She looked at his lovely brunette friend, smiled, and changed the subject.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  Dean weighed the consequence of telling her what was going on and decided to be honest. “Millie, someone bad has taken your husband and I’m going after her. I need you to tell me where his military vehicle. This is Wystl.”

  She immediately forgot about Wystl and focused on the danger to her husband. “But he took the sedan this morning!”

  “I know, but now he’s in the other vehicle,” Dean explained calmly.

  She fought through the fear and ran to the small desk in her kitchen. Dean and Wystl followed. She looked up from her computer screen and yelled, “He’s at the chancellor’s building!”

  “Thanks, Millie, we’ll do all that we can.” Dean kept his voice even and encouraging. “Wystl, he has convinced her that Visen is her target, or at least he’s still trying. We need to go to the chancellor’s office.” He looked at Millie, then at his new friend and nodded. The center of Millie’s kitchen grew dark and cloudy. Dean and his companion stepped into the murkiness and vanished.

  Svetlana stood behind Martle and noticed that her terry cloth cover-up wasn’t looking so white anymore. Also, she was aware that her knee was sore where she caught Dean on the chin. She frowned at her body’s weakness. My knee shouldn’t be sore. I have gotten soft since my lessons at Master Sung’s school in China.

  Master would take her out into the bamboo jungle and have her warm up by using the rope dart to clear an opening about six meters across. In ten minutes or less, she had to level the bamboo down to half a meter above the ground. If she failed to achieve the time or knocked down something other than bamboo, they would move to another patch of jungle and start over.

  She began the lessons when she was nine years old and always failed. The sweat and painful fatigue came on quickly and robbed her of success. Her hands would slip and her muscles would burn.

  “Again!” he would command over and over.

  Again would echo in her mind forever.

  “You must not fight the dart; you must feel its essence,” he would stress each time.

  Slowly, over the months and years, she realized that the dart was getting better at taking down the bamboo. When she let her contorting, twisting body flow with the dart’s chi energy, her time improved.

  Sometimes the bamboo shafts were so close together that the dart would choose to begin its attack on the trees directly in front by swinging up vertically from the ground or straight down from above. Once it created a narrow path, it would begin spinning forward like a huge three-meter-wide circular saw blade and spin irresistibly from vertical to horizontal through the bamboo.

  After she began to consistently clear an area quickly enough for her sensei, the real training began. He hung a one-meter-long tree limb at the center of the clearing, and she would practice kicking and punching the hard wood. Her mind and body absorbed the wood’s strength and became just as hard.

  “You must be able to defend without the dart,” Master advised.

  Once he was satisfied with her skill against the wood, he hung twenty fist-sized balls from bamboo parasols. They hung at different heights and distances on thin strings all around her.

  “You must strike all the balls and keep striking. They must not stop swinging. They all must continue to move for ten minutes.”

  Ultimately, she reduced her bamboo-clearing time to five minutes. At age fourteen, Master combined the wood and balls into a single exercise of power, agility, and speed. The wood became just another thing to kick or punch along with the balls.

  Ignoring the pain in her knee, she continued to reduce her presence and patiently hid behind General Martle. He was trying to talk his way past the chancellor’s secretary so that Svetlana could confront Jonathan. What he said to the secretary wasn’t important, so she focused on the next obstacle: the chancellor’s guards.

  Security included four plainclothes Secret Service agents brooding at different points around the reception room. On each side of the chancellor’s door stood a Ranger in full-camouflaged battle dress, holding an M25 with an attached rocket launcher. Even bulked up with all their gear, Svetlana could tell that they were almost two meters tall and seemed to squeeze the door like granite bookends. That makes a total of six to eliminate.

  “Ellen, I need to get in to see the chancellor. It has to do with the aliens,” he lied, aware that Svetlana stood right behind him.

  “Well, he said no interruptions, but I guess he wouldn’t mind if it’s you,” Ellen considered out loud. She released the outside lock on Jonathan’s office door and keyed the intercom to announce the general.

  Jonathan stood on the other side of the door. Deep in thought, he stared down at the glass-and-steel city. The rooftops shone brightly in the sunlight under the clear blue sky. He was waiting for confirmation that the assassin had finally completed her contract and killed the Network leader.

  That’s odd – a small dark cloud...? The rest of the sky remained clear as he watched the cloud only a few meters outside his window expand ominously. Suddenly, at the center of the apparition, a large alien shuttle burst into view. It was roughly nine meters across and covered in scaly silver armor plating. Hovering threateningly right in front of him, the craft’s slanted cockpit windows and pointed nose section gave the impression of a snake’s head.

  Shocked, Jonathan jumped back, fell over an easy chair, and knocked over an end table. The lamp on the end table landed right on his chest. It hurt and knocked the wind out of him but wasn’t heavy enough to do serious damage.
<
br />   He pulled himself up on the arm of the chair. Still reeling, he looked up just in time to see the shuttle’s pointed bow open like a scaly mouth. A ten-meter-long gangway shot out and crashed through his picture window. It bridged the gap from Jonathan’s office to the shuttle like a glistening tongue. The thin, slanted cockpit windows and the scaly gaping fore section gave Jonathan the uneasy feeling of staring into the mouth of a hungry king cobra.

  Aliens in purple and gold battle armor disembarked from the shuttle and marched down the ramp toward his office. Jonathan leaned heavily on the top of his desk and hit the alarm. The door to his office popped open immediately. The two Rangers burst through the door with their M25s raised. The Secret Service followed right behind with their guns drawn.

  Everyone paused for a long moment. The Humans froze with surprise while the aliens waited for new rules of engagement from Colonel Sodrew. Their orders were to get the chancellor and the Searcher back to Consortia in less than a sub-cycle without hurting any Humans.

  Sodrew stepped out from behind his squad of twenty and screamed. “What are you waiting for? Take the chancellor!”

  They began marching toward Jonathan again.

  “Chancellor, get down!” yelled one of the Rangers as he raised his M25.

  Not waiting to see what the weapon was capable of, twenty lines of red praser energy flashed centimeters above Jonathan’s head as he dropped to the floor again behind his desk. The two Secret Service agents went down immediately, flaming holes smoking from their chests. The Rangers and remaining agents shot their weapons, rapid fire, through the smoke rising from the downed guards. Another volley of red energy lashed out as the Rangers and Secret Service took cover behind the overstuffed leather chairs. Gaping holes opened up and smoked in the wall around the door to their rear.