by T. R. Harris
The next major compartment he came to was his own quarters. He entered cautiously, knowing that any new leader would have claimed his suite for himself. It was the biggest and most elaborate accommodations on the entire planet, a place Nigel had spared no expense in constructing. Yet as he entered, he found this part of the base to be vacant as well.
Now he began to worry. If any of his men remained, then someone would have claimed his quarters. So had he returned to an abandoned base? If so, then why was the power on, the heat set and the atmosphere still circulating?
He moved on to the labs and the alien quarters, where his scientists had once labored.
He entered the main lab and found a completely different scene than he witnessed so far. Here everything was clean and sterile, with bright lights shining and the smell of alien occupancy almost overwhelmingly present. At least his scientists were still here, if not presently in view. He began to pick up a slight trace, an awareness sitting at the edge of consciousness.
He entered the room where his chief scientist, Kronis Nur, would normally be seated, his incredible mass easily supported on the four massive legs native to his kind. He was a heavy-worlder as well, yet sloth-like in his movements, as were most beings from high-gravity planets – with the notable exception of Humans and Kracori. This room was also vacant—
Just then the door to the room slid shut and the locks engaged. Nigel turned to the metal door and raised his Mac-10. Through the large glass wall of the room, Nigel saw Kronis, as well as his two other scientists shuffle into view. Kronis, especially, carried a sinister smile on his face, or what passed as a sinister smile on the face of a Vizzen. Yet it wasn’t the smile that set Nigel’s heart to pounding and caused his breath to come in short gasps. It was the sight of the shiny metal medallion Kronis Nur had draped around his thick neck.
The alien was wearing one of the artificial telepathy devices like they had built for him.
Anger replaced his initial fear, and he opened up with the Mac-10 on the glass wall of the office. The deafening sound of round and after round striking the bullet-proof glass and confined to the small space of the lab caused Nigel to let loose with a primal scream. Soon the twenty-two rounds in the magazine were spent and the thick haze of white smoke nearly obscured Nigel from those outside the room. Nigel gripped the useless weapon so tight in his hand that his knuckles turned white. He glared at the smug alien through the window.
Kronis lumbered up to the glass wall and a speaker crackled to life within the office. “Welcome home, Ma-Jor. I must say it is quite the surprise to learn that you are alive. When you first entered the secret passageway my colleagues and I have been in a quandary as to what to do with you.”
“Where are my men?” Nigel asked, his face red, his heart pounding with unrestrained hatred.
“Some still live,” the alien answered. “They are sequestered in a chamber not far from here. But I must say, we are growing tired of having to feed them on a regular basis. At this point, we see very little need to keep them alive.” He moved closer to the window, until both Nigel and alien’s faces were only inches apart, separated by the glass. “And now we have you. Adding your energy to the other Humans may not be a wise move on our part. You may give them hope and another escape may be planned.”
“Another…?”
“Yes, the last attempt failed miserably,” Kronis said with a bounce in his voice. One of his delicate, extremely talented hands reached up to stroke the metal medallion. “At the time, your companions did not realize what happened to them and how we were able to so easily contain them. Unfortunately, they had to learn the hard way what they were up against. I must thank you for providing us with the impetus to develop these wonderful devices.” He looked to the other two scientists, each wearing a medallion of their own. “It seems now the lowly technicians among your cadre are now in charge and possessing of a power that even you Humans cannot resist.”
“So what happens now? Are you going to keep me locked in here forever?” Nigel unslung the shotgun from his back and leveled it at the alien on the other side of the window. “You do know that device won’t do anything to stop a thousand pellets of buckshot from tearing through your flabby alien flesh.”
“Of course we are aware. That is why we waited until we could contain you before revealing ourselves. But you see, Ma-Jor, we have options.” Just then Nigel began to hear a soft whistling sound as the air in the office began to be drawn into the vents. It wouldn’t be long until the atmosphere in the room would be gone. And then the whistling stopped.
“You see, Human, I could kill you now simply by vacating the atmosphere from the lab. Or I could leave you in there until you starve to death or die of dehydration. You see, I have had the opportunity to study Humans for some time now, and I know your weakness. They are as any other living creature. You are not immortal – even though it appears you have risen from the dead!”
Nigel was silent for a moment as he quickly assessed his chances. They didn’t look good, and as long as he stayed locked up in this room he had no options at all. He lowered the shotgun and then let it fall to the floor. Then he unbuckled the ammo belt and let that fall as well. He raised his arms and locked his hands above his head.
“Okay, you’ve got me. I surrender.”
The scientists all looked at each other with looks of undisguised glee. These creatures were unaccustomed to winning against stronger, more savages races. Now they were reveling in the moment like schools girls asked on their first dates.
Nigel stared at them with a look of sorrow bordering on tears. He trembled visibly and did his best to make the scene as convincing as possible. The scientists may have gotten the drop on him, yet he wondered if they knew how to handle their success. He continued to play it to the hilt hoping they would see him as a defeated man, accepting of his fate.
One of the scientists produced a MK flash weapon and the door to the office clicked and began to slide open. The blue-skinned creature leveled the weapon at him, still displaying a considerable amount of joy.
“Come then, Ma-Jor. We will place you with the others, seeing that you have so readily accepted your situation.” Kronis’s voice was higher-pitched and came in a much more rapid pace than Nigel had ever heard before. “You, more than the others, know what can be achieved by the medallions, so please do not attempt to mount an escape attempt. We are very close to simply exterminating the Humans and returning to our worlds. Even though we were outcasts before, with the medallions we could return to an entirely different welcoming. Now move.”
Nigel did as he was told. The third scientist stepped forward and placed an electronic collar around his neck. The cold metal tightened to just above the level of choking.
“We control the intensity of the collar, Ma-Jor,” the alien name Monick Bor’nick told him. “Just a thought … and you will die.”
The trio of ecstatic alien technicians led him to the thick metal security door to the eastern shuttle hangar. He waited for the door to cycle open and entered when ordered. He turned to look at the scientists as the door swung closed. He was sure he would see them again soon, and under completely different circumstances. But he would need the help of men.
He turned to peer into the dimness of the room and was totally unprepared for what he saw.
48
Aboard the Pegasus…
Adam had never seen a real blackhole in space, so when the trail of the mystery squadron led them past a bizarre system where a singularity was eating a neighboring star, Sherri and he stared mesmerized at the awesome sight.
The blackhole was unseen, of course, with just its influence on the nearby white dwarf indicating its presence. A long stream of stellar gas was being drawn from the star and sent spiraling off into space towards a dark dot surrounded by a tight ring of the star’s stolen material. Even though the two objects were still two-hundred million miles from the Pegasus, the two enraptured Humans could clearly see the movement of the yellow and white
hot gas as it spiraled down into the bottomless pit of the blackhole. To see something this big and this violent – and to observe it happening in real-time – was fascinating.
It had taken the Pegasus four days to catch up with the convoy of warships, helped by the fact that they did slow down to normal in-system velocities as they approached the spectacular scene of the star-eating blackhole. Adam and Sherri were sure the ships weren’t on a sightseeing tour, so they began to frantically scour the star charts trying to figure out the fleet’s final destination in this region. It was obvious the death-spiral system was not it; no planets could survive orbiting such an unstable gravity source. Yet this region of space had barely been surveyed – even though it was only about fifteen-hundred light years from Earth – and there were half-a-dozen stars located within a light-year of their present location.
Fortunately, the alien spacecraft hadn’t slashed through any other systems getting to this point; in fact it avoided most of them as it got closer to Earth, apparently not wanting to draw attention to its movements. The Adenion system – which the ships had shredded – was located over thirty-five hundred light-years from Earth, so the Kracori – or whoever they were – hadn’t been as cautious then as they were now.
But the gravity wave was now lining up towards a star located a third of a light-year from the dwarf-blackhole system, a star designated as HIP-322 on the chart, and just one of millions of such stars too insignificant to carry an actual name. There was no data regarding planets within the system – inhabited or not – and yet the twenty-plus starships were definitely headed there.
As the Pegasus entered the outer limits of the stellar system – a discrete distance from the source of the wave – Sherri began to pick up dozens of other smaller spacecraft flitting about within the system. Adam swung a second seat over next to her and helped analyze the gravity signatures of these new contacts. They appeared to be different from normal sigs, indicating that these drives were of a foreign design than even those used by the warships that had just entered the system.
“Could this be an undiscovered race who have their own gravity-drive technology?” Sherri asked.
“Undiscovered by us, but not the Kracori or the Klin,” Adam pointed out. “The wells are efficient, but not as refined as those from the Expansion. And look.” He pointed to a grouping of nine starship signatures just now entering the system behind them. “These ships have even a different sig … and they’re arriving from outside the system.”
“What’s your point?”
“It could mean that there are a variety of alien ships operating within this system, and not just those belonging to the natives.”
“So you think we can slip in without standing out … too much?” Sherri asked, a look of concern on her face. “If we can analyze their signatures, then they can surely analyze ours.”
“You’re right,” Adam said. “But the Pegasus does have a signature unlike any around, including those of Earth-built ships. If these natives are in cahoots with the Kracori, then they’re probably aware of Earth-specific signatures.”
“Cahoots?” Sherri’s smile almost erupted into full-blown laughter. “Do all you people from California talk like that? Even we hicks from Kentucky don’t use words like cahoots anymore.”
“I guess I watched too many History Channel programs when I was growing up. It seemed like an appropriate word for the situation.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, sweetie, it is. But damn!”
“Mind if we get back to the matter at hand,” Adam said, feeling more than a little embarrassed. “We still need to verify what’s going on in-system. Those warships didn’t come all this way just to take shore leave on some tropical paradise of a world. They’re up to no good.”
Sherri was still staring at him and smiling; she suddenly bent over and kissed him on the cheek. “Sometimes you are just too damn cute.”
“Later, babe; this isn’t a Viagra-moment.”
“Too bad….” Sherri turned back to the nav screen with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “That planet there seems to be where most of the activity is centered.” She pulled up a read-out of atmosphere, temperature and surface gravity: “Breathable air, average temperature, if a little cooler than Earth, and with surface gravity about Juirean-normal, or around a quarter less than ours.”
“So we’ll be supermen there.”
“Super-persons, my dear,” Sherri corrected. “We really have to work on your misogynistic tendencies.”
He smiled back at her. “I don’t hate women – just some women – and then just some of the time.”
“Present company excepted, of course!”
“I didn’t say that.”
49
A few minutes later panic swept over the two Humans, as they approached the central planet for this unnamed system and discovered that the warships they’d been trailing were nowhere to be found. Even a fleet of over twenty metal behemoths is easy to hide within the volume of a star system and operating only on maneuvering-wells and chemical drive made them virtually impossible to track.
“I’m sure they haven’t moved on,” Adam said aloud, more to soothe this own doubts than Sherri’s. “But until we find them, we can’t be sure if there are only twenty ships or a thousand.”
“We’ll find them, Adam,” Sherri said. “The transmissions I’m picking up are being translated by the onboard computers, so the aliens down there appear to have translation bugs. Why don’t we drop down to surface and ask around? Besides, we still need to get the forward viewscreen repaired. Using only the monitors to see outside is driving me crazy.”
“But we don’t have any idea what they use for money down there,” Adam countered. “How are we going to pay for the repairs?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Sherri answered with a smile. “But that’s what you specialize in, isn’t it – getting stuff by brute force? And now you have Arieel’s gift. Just make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse.”
“Aren’t you just the regular comedian today?”
“If you can’t laugh in the face of imminent danger, then when can you?”
Adam began the descent calculations. “By the way, why don’t you slip me a little of whatever you’re smoking? I might like a little artificial courage myself.”
The world below was a mass of shimming blue and white and dotted with countless green and brown patches signifying tiny landmasses made up of atolls and islands. Some of the larger islands weren’t much bigger than the United Kingdom back on Earth, and there didn’t appear to be anything close to being classified as a continent. There were no mountains, no deserts and no vast open plains … just two small icecaps at each pole to break up the expanse of water. If ever there was a waterworld, this was it.
The ship’s comm crackled as the planetary traffic control linked up. “Approaching spacecraft, declare your authorization,” the almost artificial-sounding voice commanded.
“Requesting approach vector for repairs and resupply,” Sherri responded. They had decided to let her do the talking since even in space female pilots were a rarity and not something the aliens would be expecting, especially if they were scanning for possible intruders and spies. “It’s been a long journey and I would really like to stretch my legs.”
“The transponder on your vessel is not registering. What is your planet of origin?”
Before their CW-array had been damaged back in the Adenion system, Adam and Sherri had heard about the uprising in the Human colony of the Jusepi. Even though Jusepi sounded more like an Italian restaurant than a race of aliens, if the natives here were on the lookout for Humans, then claiming to be one of their enemies seemed like a plan. “Duelux, my friend; we are Jusepi.”
There was a pause on the link. “You are cleared for entry,” the voice said. “What repairs do you require? That will determine your landing point.”
“Just hull work; we have a cracked forward viewport … oh, and our CW-link is down.”
“
Follow the beacon to Neforlan. There are facilities there to assist you, although I am not familiar with the term CW-link. Do not deviate from the beacon once you enter the atmosphere.”
“CW is a form of communication relay; sorry for the confusion. I understand about the beacon and will comply … and thank you for your kindness.”
There was a slight pause on the comm before the alien spoke again. “I am also sending you a briefing video for Aslon. It is apparent you have never been upon our world before. There are certain manners you must assimilate to avoid conflict, first of which is the use of familiar terms and greetings when you are not of the O’mly. Study the video before having any further contact with us.”
Both Sherri and Adam matched raised eyebrows. “Well, excuse me!” Sherri said after cutting the link. “Snooty little bastards, aren’t they?”
“Better check the report for anything about carrying weapons,” Adam said. “I don’t intend on going out in public without backup.”
“At least you have Arieel’s gift—”
“I really wish you’d stop calling it that,” Adam said.
“What should I call it: the device, the implant … your turbo-charged remote control?”
“I don’t know; I grew up around the military acronyms out the wahzoo, so why not ATD … for Artificial-Telepathy-Device. I need to settle on something myself.”
“ATD? I like it,” Sherri said. “But what about ATD-PBTOSANA?”
“What!” Adam had no idea what she was talking about.
“That stands for Artificial-Telepathy-Device … Provided-By-The-Over-Sexed-Alien-Named-Arieel.”
“You’ve got to be kidding—”
“Yeah, I’m just screwing with you, Adam. Lighten up. ATD is fine.”
“I think you’re losing it, Ms. Valentine,” Adam said, forcing a smile.