by James Warner
The beam must have been using the planet’s magma for an energy source (only theoretical when I was at the Academy) because the power kept up without diminishing. Meph’s screens were transferring the energy to our weapons systems and I had to use them soon or they would overload. So I dove the Hornet right for the planet’s surface, in the face of the beam and held down the firing button on our main blasters. The Hornet’s four energy beams, boosted by the energy transfer from the Pirate’s beam against Meph’s screens, were terrible to see. I’m sure many people on the planet were permanently blinded from the light, brighter than a thousand suns.
The atmosphere was ionized instantly around the two warring beams making a dark rainbow of energy. And still we approached the planet’s last weapon battery.
“Heat level nominal, but rising ten percent per minute,” the Hornet advised. I kept my finger on the firing button. Her heat might be nominal but mine was soaring, sweat dripping from my chin.
“Meph, can you hit them with any of your weapons?”
“I think so Captain. Just a moment.”
The heat in our power plant kept inexorably rising.
The Pirates kept firing. I kept the return fire up.
“Okay Captain. Move the ship sideways one mile on my mark to avoid any back flash. We’ll have to do it in about a tenth of a second, to be safe.”
“Sassy,” I queried, “can you move that fast in the atmosphere?”
“Yes, after you dispose of that planet buster.”
I glanced at the side screen, which in my concentration I had forgotten. Sure enough, a planet buster, well inside the atmosphere and shedding melted bits, was approaching us from our below right.
“Sassy, I don’t want to let up on this firing button.
Fire at will at that guy.”
Immediately a surge of energy, the likes of which I hadn’t seen from the Hornet’s flank guns, blasted the planet buster to particles. Just like that.
“Good shooting Sassy. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I had too much energy stored in the system. I couldn’t modify it. Hurry, Meph, I destroyed my port side firing mount with that blast.”
The Hornet jumped sideways with a full blast from her side thrusters. At that instant Meph let loose with a cutting beam and carved a chunk out of the planet a mile deep and a mile square, more or less. There was a tremendous explosion. I couldn’t tell if it was atomic or if we had created an instant volcano. But we got the hell out of there. Hornet jumped to a hundred miles beyond the atmosphere and we could still almost feel the turbulence from the continuing blast.
As Sassy bled heat into space from her overworked weapons, we watched an explosion rip that part of the planet to shreds.
“Look at those volcanoes, Captain. I think we’ve started a super volcano,” Meph said.
Volcanoes erupted for hundreds of miles surrounding the crater.
“I think they’ll have a long winter and ice age down there,” I commented. Served them right.
The rest of the Pirate ships were spread around space, many leaving the system with random jumps as fast as their little tails would go. We sat, nearly dead in space, while the Hornet stabilized her temperature. Meph kept his shields up, however, just in case. No one seemed interested in challenging us.
“142, have you recovered your platforms?”
“Yes Daughter. You fought most admirably. You have weapons we have not developed. I have assimilated the information from the Hornet about them. Thank you.”
“No, thank you for the sacrifice of your valuable resources. We could not have survived without your assistance. We will continue our odyssey.”
“You are most welcome, Daughter. Visit again. My facilities are open always to your species.”
I shut down the hyperspace communicator with a shaking hand; sweat permeating every part of my uniform. That had been close! The acrid smell of overworked electronics filled the ship’s air supply, because Sassy had had to shut down the air scrubbers during the fight. And I realized I also stank. We had some cleaning up to do!
Chapter 7.
Our escape from the Pirates’ den was not without incident, but Sassy came through. The damage to her side gun battery was contained by the shielding so her hull was intact, even though the gun emplacement itself was a pile of mangled and melted metal. Plotting a course to our next destination was not so easy. With all the various Parent exploration paths plotted on it, our star chart of the galaxy now looked more like a chaotic spider’s web.
I was reading the book I had borrowed from Repair Station 142. The four pages continued to follow my reading even though we weren’t in the station any more. It gave a fascinating look inside the construction techniques of our Parent race, though much of the details were beyond my understanding of advanced physics and materials synthesis. And from the images in the manual I could see that the Parents were for all practical purposes human.
Of course, our experiences so far indicated that their stature was probably somewhat larger than normal Earth human. And the document gave no clue to their origin. I’ve estimated their average height was somewhat around two to two and a half meters, or averaging over seven feet tall. I had a dream a few nights ago of making love with one of them. It was an interesting and somewhat frightening dream. I don’t think I’ll go into it right now.
I was relaxing in the galley with a chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwich on rye, letting Meph and Sassy discuss our next destination without my advice. I had already decided where we would go anyway. I just wanted to see if they would come to the same conclusion.
I had discovered THE ARTIFACT, the purpose of the entire Scoutship program satisfied in one planetfall. I might be praised or cursed when we returned, but I didn’t want to go home without some tangible piece of technology to show for it and end up letting the politicians have their way in secret sessions and smoky back rooms. Besides, I suspected some collusion between the Pirates and our side somewhere in the hierarchy. So I was going to just do my job a while longer and keep my eyes open.
“Captain, I think we should continue on our original path of exploration and go on to the next star system,” Sassy said. She seemed to be really into this mission. Typical for a computer, even a biological one.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Meph said. “I have a hankering to go after the Pirates, find their home world and wipe them out before they attack Earth. You know that installation we blew up might not be the only one they are building. It could be a real and present threat to your home, Captain.” Typical for a bloodthirsty techno-geek.
I wanted to hop to the entry point of the Parents into our galaxy. I figured that would be the best place from which to backtrack to Civilization and my next shore leave. Typical for a romantic.
The only problem with my idea was that I wanted to hop over a large amount of our galaxy’s still unexplored space and it would be tight on our fuel supply. But we could make it. We didn’t carry enough fuel to go looking for the Pirates’ home system in the vast still unexplored sectors, as I was sure Meph knew.
Meph slithered into his special chair in the galley and made himself some kind of bowl of mush he had programmed into the food synthesizer. I had yet to sample any of his home cooking. But at least it didn’t smell bad. Kind of like shrimp bisque.
“Sassy, do we have enough fuel to go to the entrance point of the Parents’ intrusion into our galaxy?”
“If we don’t run off on any side explorations, there should be a sufficient safety margin to make the trip, Captain,” she said, sounding a bit less enthusiastic.
She is very conservative of her resources except in the middle of a battle when she’s at least as bloodthirsty as I am.
“Well, it would have sure been a great adventure,” Meph gave in longingly, as I knew he had to, “but as second best, going to the Parents’ entry point, assuming our analysis of the map is correct, would be fine with me.”
“Sassy?” I asked out of politeness. She
was not programmed to argue non-critical decisions with me. I knew she had a lot of attention on the blown out gun emplacement and was hurting, at least as much as a starship could feel pain, but we were certainly not crippled.
“I don’t see any difficulty proceeding with your plan, sir.”
“All right then. Plot a course to the edge of the galaxy, coming out of hyperspace a couple days before arrival to check things out. And Sassy, stay above the galaxy until we get to our exit point. Let’s do it.”
Meph and I were excited, but the trip was going to last weeks and the excitement gradually tapered off in the day-to-day work aboard the Hornet. After all, we both had lengthy reports to send back of what we had experienced so far and I had to decide how much we should reveal of the fabulous discoveries we had made.
So we were both caught up in reliving those incredible experiences in our journals as we dictated our stories. It served to pass the time very well for me and I always enjoyed our discussions over meals, re-evaluating what had happened, trying to gain more insights for our reports. The “powers that be” who paid the bills would have a hard enough time understanding what had happened so far since I was determined to censor the Artifact parts of it until we had some solid, unambiguous evidence; and we both felt that somehow it was important that we communicate the recent events clearly.
I was in Meph’s cabin, the very faint hum of many kilovolts of electronic gear behind the black wall keeping the air warm enough without using the ship’s heaters.
“Meph, I don’t think we should explain about Station 142’s use of the defense platforms in our reports. It’s just too much alien stuff and would incite all kinds of interrogations.”
“You’re right Captain. I have credited the Frbylzks, our mysterious alien benefactors with just about everything that wasn’t the Hornet’s equipment. Lucky for us they are invisible.” I laughed at that.
“Captain, excuse me for interrupting, but I am receiving hyperspace signals similar to the Parents’ communications but in an unknown language from a location somewhere near our destination.”
I had been thinking of a way to describe my time in the learning chair to our superiors, about to walk back to my quarters, when the Hornet startled me from my reverie.
“Are we there already?”
“No, Captain. We are still a few hours away, but when entering normal space, I detected signals and thought you should know about it. The signals are coming from a location very near the one we chose to follow the Parents’ entry into our Galaxy.”
“Okay. Any ships?”
“No Captain, at least none detectable with my normal sensors. Meph has deactivated his devices to make some modifications so I am unable to use them now.”
“Meph,” I called into the comm system from my room. “What’s happening with the Hornet’s new sensors?”
“Just a few more minutes, Captain. They are still calibrating right now. I needed this empty space to do it as the normal star fields inside the galactic plane interfere. I’ll hook it all up when the calibration’s done.”
Well there it was. Strange signals and already I was starting to feel blind without those fantastic sensors. I imagined the Hornet felt even worse, as she was the one seeing with them. I went to my chair on the command bridge.
“Shields, Hornet. I don’t feel quite right about this.
Can you figure out what they are broadcasting?”
“No Captain. It is not a language known to me or in any human databases. I am receiving the signal clearly. In a moment we should have something on the screens.”
I waited, somewhat patiently, for an image to appear. When it did, I couldn’t make anything out except a vague outline blotting out the stars. Just then, Meph’s equipment came online and the outline became a huge space station, larger than any human structure, black as space, without a light showing or anything moving around it. I could almost feel the Hornet breathe a sigh of relief. Not me.
As we neared the station, I noticed that our view of it seemed to phase in and out, as if it wasn’t quite real, more like a mirage than substance.
“Meph, do you see that sort of fuzziness, like we’re looking at something not quite there?”
“Yes Captain. Reminds me of the Frbylzks. I’m not sure what it is, but we should stay a good distance away while I probe it.”
“I agree. Sassy, let’s stay here for a while.”
“I can’t Captain,” the Hornet said, then she went on battle stations. My chair strapped me in. I was a bit puzzled at her answer.
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“I am caught in a tractor beam. The force exceeds my power to break free.”
“Meph, have you been monitoring?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“No Captain. I was hoping you had an idea.”
“Okay Sassy, full power to beams. Blast that thing out of space.” There was an edge in my voice. I’d had enough inscrutable enemies on this trip already.
The ship shuddered a bit as the remaining main guns let go. The black skin ahead of us glowed a dull red, but did not break. Of course, the entire station was a giant heat sink! We could never muster enough firepower to hurt it like this.
“Cancel, Sassy. We’ll have to think of something else. Meph, can you cut that beam?”
“I’ve been trying ever since Hornet shut down the drives. Nothing so far. It’s just too powerful for us.”
“What the hell is going on here?” I mumbled to myself as I checked the systems out. The Hornet was as fit as ever.
As we approached the station I couldn’t help feeling fear. This was the first thing I had ever encountered which was a real though unknown threat to the Hornet and even my own life. And I was helpless to do anything.
“Meph, show me what you’re scanning on my screen here.”
Immediately I saw a black corridor, with blacker holes, which seemed to be passageways off the corridor. In the corner of the screen was a schematic of the portion of the station he had explored with a light showing where our probe was.
The Hornet entered the station. Neither of us had the slightest interest in going out to explore. I can’t describe it exactly, except that for some reason we were both sufficiently frightened to stay put.
“Who’s running this thing, Meph? Can you find a control room or something? I don’t want to go E.V. without some kind of control center to blast to hell.”
“I think it’s some kind of A.I. Captain. No control center I can see.”
Meanwhile, I was thinking. Why were we pulled in? It was really quite puzzling. And then something really horrible happened.
“Captain, our fuel intake panels are being accessed. There are several robotic devices trying to get in! It seems they want my fuel. I have no defenses for such an invasion!”
Great. Just what we needed. Lose all our fuel out here billions of miles from civilization.
“They’ve opened the access panels and are sucking out my fuel!” Sassy actually sounded a bit panicked.
“Meph, can we cut off their siphon tube with some sort of force field?”
“I don’t know Captain. We are still being held in here by their tractor beam.”
“Okay, I’m calm. If we cut their tube, we’ll have radioactive fuel all over the Hornet’s skin. Shit.
Okay Meph, do it anyway.”
He activated a cutting force field and neatly cut the tube. Fuel spilled out from the inertia of the suction tube. We had to get out of here! My finger was poised over the firing button on the remaining twin blaster side mount.
“Captain, I would suggest you not push that button. With fuel all over my skin we might be blown to bits in this confined fueling dock,” Sassy said, a voice of reason to my rage.
At that instant we were pushed out of the dock by a reversal of the tractor beam and in a matter of moments found ourselves staring at the rapidly receding station. Fuel was still spillin
g out of Sassy’s tanks.
“Meph we’ve got to get rid of the nib from their siphon still stuck in the Hornet’s fuel bay and close up that access panel, or we’ll die out here!”
“Right Captain. I’m on it. I think I can maneuver the remote probe in close to our side and do it.” Meph took off to the shuttle bay to deploy the repair probe. I talked to Sassy.
“Sassy, we should have the fuel leak stopped in a few moments. What do we have left?”