by James Warner
‘Oh. Well, let’s get Sassy to analyze the pattern. Maybe she’ll come up with something.”
When we returned to the Hornet she said good morning in the Parent race’s language. I translated for Meph. He decided to learn it from her and went to his cabin to hook up. I went to my cabin to read the reproductions of the gold tablets I had in the database and to clean myself up.
I translated the Earth tablets easily. There was the same message, without the part about suicide. And the directions were easy to decipher. The Library for Earth was in a country called Peru in the Andes Mountains of South America near the border of Ecuador. Explorers had been searching those caverns for centuries. No big deal to find it. The repair station was in the northern mountains of the country of California. I sent the entire translation back to the Galactic Library where no one would see it for years and went to the battle bridge.
“Where are we going, Caryn?” Sassy asked in the personal way we had set up for when we were alone.
“I don’t know Sassy. Show me the star chart with the new information on the fertilized worlds and the exploration lines from the Librarian down below.” On came the chart, filling a good third of the airspace of the room with the larger size of the whole galaxy. It was quite a maze.
“Extrapolate the data for a single source for all the fertilizations and exploration paths.”
I sat there and watched the colored points and lines shift and change color as Sassy went through various scenarios. Two dashed lines appeared at about a 120-degree angle, exiting the galactic plane.
“What are those dashed lines?”
“Those are the two possible vectors exterior to our galaxy from which the fertilizing ships may have entered our systems.”
“Oh.”
I continued to watch as Sassy went through her massive computing power trip, trying to sort out all the data. After about 30 minutes, one of the dashed lines became solid. The other one stayed dashed.
“Aha. The solid one is the line of greatest probability?”
“Yes Caryn. There is no indication of internal origin anywhere in the data I have been given. The dashed line indicates my best guess as to their exit from our galaxy. The solid line is a near certainty as to their entry, since it
points to a nearby galaxy.”
The solid line entered the galaxy right near the rim, opposite Earth’s arm. The dashed line exited the galaxy on an angle a ways past Earth’s position. The web of exploration covered nearly the entire plane of the galactic disk, excluding only the very center and about a sector of the galaxy at the extreme outer edge opposite Earth’s arm, where it just happens no humans had explored yet.
Meph entered as I was studying the display. He glanced at what I was doing and picked it up at once.
“That’s interesting Captain. It correlates with my own downloaded information that there has been no exploration in the area opposite our arm of the galaxy. Have you discovered the origin of your race’s Parents?”
“No, Meph. But I know where they aren’t from. They aren’t from our galaxy.”
“Ah. That would explain the relatively condensed time frame of origins for all the civilizations discovered over the last few hundred years.”
“Look Meph!” I exclaimed, pointing into the map at an area of high exploration content. “This is the location of the home world of those aliens we met at Last Chance. Wonder what all the exploration by the Parents was about there?”
“Is there any reason why we can’t go there and check it out, sir?”
“Hm. I dunno. Let me check the orders.”
Chapter 6.
The trip to our next destination was close, only a couple of days at warp 3. Since our orders were to follow the trail of M-type stars and since this star was M-type and exactly on the trail, this was where we were going.
“Sassy, let’s have a look around. Exit warp with full battle stations,” I ordered, as we neared the system. Just a precautionary habit I had picked up over the years.
“Yes, sir.”
In exactly 45 seconds from the moment we entered normal space the Hornet was rocked by a near miss blast close to her midsection. I was thrown to the floor of the bridge, since I had been lounging in my command chair, not buckled in or anything.
“Meph wake up! We’re under attack!” I screamed into the comm system, climbing back into the chair.
“All systems operational, Captain,” Sassy replied, almost immediately.
“Okay Captain. That was one hell of a surprise. I’m fine and on station in the battle bridge. I’ll have some data for you in a moment,” Meph reported. “Enemy transmissions coded, Captain, just a moment.” Okay, I thought to myself. We’re under attack – nothing fancy, just probing blasters. I glanced at the holo. I could see our position just a little ways from the system. We were surrounded by space stations, sixteen ships, one of which was coming in for another strike and what appeared to be a planetary shield around the fourth planet from the star. What the hell was going on here?
“Sassy, waste that guy. He wasn’t polite. Meph, hide us. This is the pits!”
The Hornet lashed out with two intense beams from her port gun emplacement and cut the enemy ship in two. Their engine compartment immediately exploded, obliterating both halves of the ship.
“Good shooting. Take us in close to that shielded planet. I want to know what’s going on here.”
The Hornet, now cloaked thanks to Meph and the Frbylzks, jumped into a standard orbit, calculated to avoid the various pieces of space junk orbiting the planet.
“Meph, do you see anything?”
“Nothing extraordinary. Their planetary shield is giving me some trouble. Another minute.”
I sat and fumed. I switched on the small monitor with a vengeance so I could see what Meph was seeing. The planet appeared to be mostly undeveloped with three major industrial centers spread around various hemispheres. Meph began to zoom into one of the centers and I could make out about 50 space ships on a dock in various stages of repair.
“Captain, are you monitoring all this?” he said.
“Yes. Keep going in. Find someone important somewhere.”
“Captain, we have been caught in a general scan of close orbit space. These people know what they are doing. I’ll have to close jump to keep them from getting a fix on us until I can locate and wipe their scanner,” Sassy informed me.
“Okay. Carry on.”
I picked up one of the orbiting stations on my scanner and started to probe it. There was nothing inside but the minimum engineering gear to maintain the orbit. It was basically a hollow shell. I shifted to the next one. It was the same. The third one I looked at was humming with construction activity. Ah, this was more like it.
The Hornet rocked with another near hit. The lights on my panel went dim, then back on. That was close!
“Sassy?”
“No problem Captain. I’ve located their scanner.”
The ship hummed with a surge of power as the giant weapons loosed four energy bolts down to the planet’s surface. The beams melted a large crater in the center of some sort of industrial complex off to our right. Then the ship was ultra-quiet.
“Captain, I’ve got enough information now to figure out what all this is.” Meph spoke for the first time since we started jumping.
“We are in the middle of a major Pirate den. These orbiting stations are under construction for a planetary invasion scale of attack. There are about 250 ships down there on the planet in various stages of refit.”
A beam of energy, even heavier than what we had used, stabbed up at the Hornet. Meph’s shields saved us from annihilation. The comm system gave up. All my instruments went out except Meph’s monitor and the star chart holo.
“Captain, transfer to the battle bridge immediately. I will get us away from here as fast as possible. We have suffered major damage to the warp drive, but we remain shielded for now,” Sassy advised.
Shit.
“Sassy, t
hanks. On my way. Get us under cover of the third planet from the sun.”
I ran as fast as I could back to the battle bridge where Meph was peering into his small monitor. I strapped in just before the ship was rocked again by a close nuke blast.
“Trouble, Captain?” Meph asked, still peering into the monitor.
“Not so far. We can still run and shoot.”
“Status Sassy, on screen.” Sassy displayed our arms list and the status of the various support systems on my monitor. Indeed we had plenty of sting left.
“Meph, what have you got?”
“I have managed to scan the center where most of this is coming from. They have no intention of talking to us. The fragments of conversation I have been able to monitor are in Galactic standard and are uniformly hostile to us. They think we are a pre-emptive strike by the Admiralty and are mobilizing all their defenses to blow us out of space; assuming they can find us. Looks like Pirates to me. Definitely humanoid physiology.”
“You know, Meph, you sound awfully happy about
this little skirmish.”
Meph went back to his instruments. I thought I could make out a slight change in his color. I returned to the command bridge where I felt more at home.
“Meph, scan Planet 3.”
“Oh, right.”
“Sassy, what do you pick up from Planet 3?”
“Nothing Captain. My long range scanner is out.”
“How long to Planet 3?”
“At sub light, fifteen minutes. We are not being pursued, yet.”
I ran a diagnostic on the ship’s systems for something to do while we traveled at sub light to the closest planet. I found it was as Sassy had said. The long-range scanner was out; some of the hull plating had buckled slightly – nothing to worry about yet. We still had full weapons. But the warp drive needed some work on the fuel injection system.
When we reached the third planet of this system, Meph and Sassy set up a stationary orbit on the far side away from the Pirates. Meph began scanning, since one of the planets here was supposed to have a Library and some gold tablets, or at least some sort of Artifact from the Parents’ explorations.
I checked out the scanners and seeing no Pirate activity, went down to the battle bridge to see what Meph was up to.
“Come have a look here,” he said.
Meph had rigged up a bigger screen on his scanner and it was giving a good picture of what had become the familiar looking cave.
“Meph that looks like the other one.”
“But Captain, check out the scale factor on the side of the screen over there.” Meph replied, pointing to a small grid system on the upper right corner of the screen with one of his tentacles.
I scooted in closer to make out the numbers. That cave was big enough to hold an entire star ship!
“Sassy, can we go in there?”
“Yes Captain. The entrance and portion of the cave examined so far are large enough to conceal a Type 5
Cruiser. I should have no problem getting in.”
“Well I for one am getting nervous out here in the sun. Take us in as far as we can go.”
The Hornet broke orbit and moved down to the planet. The atmosphere was too hot for us to operate in without some sort of protection. I kept monitoring the readings as we got nearer the surface. Right at the surface, only about a mile thick, was a layer of oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, apparently trapped somehow between the planet’s surface and a permanent inversion layer in the toxic atmosphere above. But the ambient temperature was 50 degrees C, much too hot for comfort. There were, however, some plants that were thriving on the surface.
The cave went straight down for about a thousand meters. There at the bottom was what looked like a platform, or, perhaps a door. We hovered above the platform and the Hornet’s thrusters didn’t make any impression on it. I decided to land on it, so we extended the vertical landing pads and settled in. I told Sassy to keep the anti-gravs stabilized in case the platform moved. There was quite a bit of room to maneuver, as the cave walls were three or four meters away from the sides of the Hornet.
“Meph, I don’t quite get this. Down here the atmosphere is just about Earth normal and cool. Do the sensors show anything on the other side of that pad?” I was getting into a light duty air suit. I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity for exploration.
“No Captain, same story as before. The pad and anything underneath is shielded from me. But sir, you will note in the forward viewer, we are being shut in.” Meph and I stared for a moment at the sight. The opening at the top of the tunnel was being rapidly covered by something.
“Sassy, is there any hostile activity?”
“Yes Captain, I am picking up transmissions from a Pirate patrol ship through the opening. They are not above us at this time.”
As the door closed, we lost contact with the Pirate ship. Were we being protected?
“Captain, we are being moved. Communications are opened with this place. It is apparently some sort of large mechanism. Would you like to speak with them? They speak the Parents’ language.”
WouldI?!
“Yes, thanks.”
“Hello, this is Captain Caryn McDowell of the Scoutship Silver Hornet. Please explain your current operations with my ship.” I spoke in Ancient.
“Welcome, Daughter. Your ship was detected. You were scanned and we found that your star drive was damaged. There are facilities here to repair your ship that can be used effectively, although most of your design is unfamiliar. We have limited facilities for you and your crew. Therefore your ship is being moved into a repair bay. You will be able to depart your ship to temporary quarters in four minutes.”
“Meph, am I dreaming?”
“No Captain. There are no handsome male humans, so it can’t be one of your dreams.” (That’s what I get for explaining human sexuality to him.)
“Sassy, reopen communications.”
“Hello. Please instruct me in the proper name for this facility and how we are to maintain communications outside my ship.”
“I am Repair Station 142. I have been called 142 as a shortened name for convenience. I monitor all communications so just addressing me as 142 will initiate a communication cycle on your communications units.”
Well, well, well. And now we were in dry-dock. Would the wonders ever cease? It had been about ten minutes; I took off the air suit and Meph and I went to the airlock to see what 142 had done to hook us up to their whatever. So we had been scanned and Meph and the Hornet hadn’t even noticed. And apparently I was also scanned, since this machine recognized me as human and a descendent of the “fertilization”. I was beginning to feel more and more like I was in the well-known fable of Alice in Wonderland. It sure was fun.
I realized at last the full impact of my discoveries to date on this mission. Three, perhaps four Ancient Artifact spaceship stations of some kind; full access to all humans in the galaxy to them and probably instructions on how to build them ourselves. If I ever got back from this mission alive, there were going to be a lot of very disappointed Academy graduates. And my bonus? I could not begin to imagine the amount of money just these stations represented on the traditional bonus scale. Probably in the trillions of Euros Earth currency, as my bank account was valued.
We left the airlock and stepped into a transparent tunnel. I could see the Hornet. Not much damage, but there was a melted place in the side where the warp drive controller was. We were pretty lucky. A few feet one way or the other and we wouldn’t be here.
As we walked down the quiet tunnel some spidery looking robots began to cluster about the Hornet. I figured she could tell them what she needed better than I could.
Meph and I looked around. We were in a structure of incredible size, with lights in all directions. Judging from where the Hornet was docked and the way the wall we were approaching curved, the dock could easily take up a major part of the planet’s core. Perhaps the entire planet was one big dock, under a thin shell of atmosph
ere and surface material.
I finally stopped in the tunnel and grabbing the handrail I tried to see out through what looked like dusty windows, trying to make out details anywhere that might give me a clue to the size of this place. Silently, respecting my mood, Meph pointed to small latches, which allowed a portion of the tunnel transparency to be opened. We looked at each other. Then I opened it and pushed the clear panel out. I stuck my hand out the “window” and felt the tingling of a mild force field. So the dock had either no atmosphere, or, more likely, an inert one that would not support combustion or explosions. The tunnel was protected. Good. I could see much better. The fine layer of dust had been just enough to hamper seeing details at a distance.