End
The Pursuit
Travelling in hyperspace never used to make me nervous. Yet that was before we came across the Parg. A race that can track us, engage us and destroy us while we are still in hyperspace. A capability we simply don’t have as yet. Making us pretty much sitting ducks.
Now, I hate the long dark journeys and so look forward to re-emerging safe in normal space and the light of the stars. For someone who is a star ship captain that’s probably an admission that it’s time for me to retire. Which I will do. If ever I can get us home that is.
“How long before they catch us?” enquired our very nervous passenger. A Lilluthian who was an expert in alien races. We were taking her back to Earth for that very reason.
“Here in hyperspace?” I replied “it’s difficult to say.”
“They will catch us though won’t they?” she persisted.
“Yes!” I replied grudgingly.
“We can’t reach your home first then?”
“Oh No,” I replied “and we don’t want to be leading the Parg anywhere near Earth.”
Where exactly to drop out of hyperspace? I wondered where to give us the best chance of survival?
Truth was there weren’t that many options and I was pretty sure that the Parg would be able to determine exactly where we dropped out of hyperspace. We had to drop out somewhere that would give us an edge, somewhere we could partially neutralise the Parg numerical and technological advantage.
In this galactic segment only one set of coordinates came to my mind.
“The Brolden Anomaly?” queried my only half believing number two. “A star system cloaked in mystery and almost universally avoided?”
“If you have a better idea ____,” I left the sentence unfinished.
Needless to say he didn’t.
“If anything might just slow the Parg, give them second thoughts about pursuing us, then surely it’s this system,” I continued. This place almost of legend I thought but I didn’t voice those thoughts. Of course if there was something here formidable enough to slow the Parg then I hated to think what it might do to us. We would just have to take our chances.
We came out of hyperspace just outside the Brolden star system and started our journey into it at a little below light speed. All the while on full alert for the pursuing Parg to re-enter normal space somewhere about where we did.
We passed by only a few million miles from the system’s outermost world. A cold, dark, apparently lifeless, largely barren, uninviting and uninspiring rock. Or so it appeared. Though I knew appearances could be deceiving. Especially since this world, indeed the entire star system was more than a little shrouded from our detection capabilities.
Then before we could advance any further into the system we found ourselves leaving it on the far side. We had been teleported about 16,000 million miles across the entire breadth of the star system. And into the arms of the Parg who were just now dropping out of hyperspace several million miles ahead of us. Four huge, dark, ugly, squat looking deep space hunter killers, sharing absolutely nothing in common with any other star ship designs known to us.
Have the powers that hold sway in this system, whoever they may be, somehow cooperated with the Parg I wondered in despair. What an unthinkable possibility.
We took our only option and turned back into the star system fully expecting to be teleported again across the breadth of the system. Even as the Parg gave chase opening up with planet buster JFTL (just faster than light) torpedoes designed to annihilate us. Yet this time we weren’t teleported across the system while the Parg and even their torpedoes may have been. We couldn’t locate the Parg fleet at all. They didn’t even appear to be on the other side of the Brolden Anomaly and could be anywhere now.
I revised my earlier thoughts that the Parg might have been assisted by whoever called the shots around here.
“You don’t suppose this teleportation effect is basically a warning?” enquired my number two breaking into my thoughts “you get teleported across the system once as a way of saying clear off then if you don’t get the message and persist something else, maybe less pleasant, happens.”
“Anything is possible, I guess we’ll find out,” I replied. I couldn’t recall when I had last made a less useful comment. Though I’d made plenty in my life.
The teleportation effect was not a complete surprise to us. It was known of but not spoken of and I had only ever seen it described in the vaguest terms. It was certainly one of the reasons this place had earned its name. The Brolden Anomaly. And one of the reasons it was usually enthusiastically avoided. As long as you weren’t being pursued by the likes of the Parg.
We had slowed to a cautious one tenth light speed and decided to move in the general direction of the second outermost world of this system. If anything the world was even more heavily cloaked even less amenable to our detection capabilities than the outermost world.
There was no sign of the Parg anywhere in the Brolden Anomaly. Though our detection capabilities hereabouts were substantially diminished. Had they gotten the jitters and left the system I wondered. Though I very much doubted that. They were nothing if not persistent and to date, as far as we knew, hadn’t come up against anyone that might give them pause. At least not until now.
“Perhaps we should just head back out of this system and leap into hyperspace,” offered my number two. I realised a few other senior officers shared that view.
“And have the Parg jump us again?” I replied. “No we are here now let’s just do a little investigating, maybe we can even find something that we can use against the Parg. Some bit of knowledge that we can even take back to Earth with us.”
We didn’t get too close to this second outermost world before incurring a heavy and unexplained power drain. A power drain so massive that it quickly led to a near total loss of power.
“Emergency life support is still working though,” I shouted.
“No captain,’ replied my Chief Engineer “even emergency power has been lost. That’s not our life support system that’s keeping us alive.”
“Someone, something else is keeping us alive then?” My question was rhetorical.
Expecting the very worst everyone was suited up but even our suits and even the emergency life boats were powerless. So we remained on the star ship where we at least had some form of life support. Albeit that something else was powering it.
For a time we were absolutely dead in space before we started to move, gradually accelerating, under a power that had nothing at all to do with us. Something over which we had no control.
We were being pulled, as if we had been caught in a huge tractor beam, towards the very world to which we had been heading. The second outermost world of this system. Whatever was pulling us was not a tractor beam however. Or if it was, it was of a type I’d never encountered before. There were no detectable energies associated with it.
“Something of a mystical nature?” offered my number two.
“We can detect no mystical energies either,” I replied
“Unmeasurable telekinesis on a level beyond anything we have hitherto encountered?” offered my psionic counsellor.
“Its possible,” I shrugged.
“It looks like we are going to get an even closer look at this world than we had intended,” I said on the bridge and to no one in particular.
We were briefly placed in orbit above the world. Then ship and all within it were brought to the surface. Still by an unseen hand. We were brought to a very low lying valley on the mainly mountainous planetary surface. A valley shrouded in a deep thick mist which registered as at least partially mystical in nature.
In the “valley” was a small “graveyard” of star ships. Including ships of the Dreen, the Spleelth, and even the Frazzen. The latter being decidedly more technically advanced than us. There were also several star ships that I did not recognise at all.
“No ships of the Parg though,” observed my number two.
&n
bsp; I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for that or not. The Parg technology was not too much above Frazzen level. To the best of my knowledge. If the powers that be in this system could detain a Frazzen star ship I was thinking they could probably also detain the Parg fleet. Maybe.
Here in this place some minimum of our power returned to our suits and our ship. We scanned the other vessels and registered no currently present life energy signatures though there were small, scarcely detectable, residual traces of Spleelth life force.
“The Spleelth were probably the last to come here before ourselves,” observed my number two.
“It looks like the people who manned these star ships were taken somewhere from here,” I remarked hoping they had not met with some grisly fate.
It wasn’t that long before we had our questions answered.
The entire crew of my star ship, minus the star ship itself, were teleported elsewhere.
We found ourselves in what I thought of as a holding area of some kind. With very basic accommodations. Hopefully enough to meet our basic needs as long as we could figure out how exactly to access these basic facilities. It occurred to me that we might actually die before we could understand and operate the alien facilities. If they were testing us in some way then we might fail miserably. The consequences of that failure might be our lives.
The “building” we found ourselves in was of a uniform white colour, clean to the point of being antiseptic and at a size level commensurate with our numbers. At first glance we appeared to be free to move about but as one potential exit after another was denied us it became obvious that we were contained in this enclosed area. In effect prisoners. Since we had no way of knowing what lay outside this may even have been for our benefit and protection. Possibly.
“There’s something about this place,” I remarked to those of my crew in hearing distance. “It ___, it appears to be of plasti-metallic construction but there’s also something organic about it.”
“Organo-plasti-metal?” offered my number two disbelievingly.
“Maybe,” I replied doubtfully.
There was no sign at all of any of the crews of the other vessels that we had seen in the star ship graveyard. Not even the most minute residual traces of their life forces. I took that as evidence they had probably not been taken here to this specific place we found ourselves now.
How the Parg had fared in this mysterious star system was anyone’s guess. Perhaps they had even taken the sensible course and high tailed it out of the system. Though I seriously doubted that. Or they could just be patiently waiting for us at the edge of the system. If that was so the Parg might have a long wait.
“We are being processed I think,” said our Lilluthian passenger. “Tested in some way and also processed,” she corrected herself. “Or perhaps just tested” she revised her view again. “To what end I have absolutely no idea.”
Much to our disappointment we found that none of the equipment and instrumentation we had on our person worked in this place. We’d even taken off our suits as, being non operational, they had become more of a hindrance. We were not even able to tell how much time had elapsed.
Slowly we worked our way through the very alien instrumentation that confronted us. We were gradually able to access the elements of our survival; food that was nutritious, controllable temperature, more agreeable atmosphere, waste disposal and other things. It was slow painstaking work. It was obvious that we couldn’t just sit there and wait for our jailors to make an appearance. Was death the price of failure to use this incredibly alien instrumentation to our advantage? I wondered. I also wondered about the Spleelth. They were pleasant enough but really not that bright for a space faring race. As if someone had gifted them with faster than light travel without them having earned it. Would they have been able to do what we had done?
Eventually we even managed to exit the building construct that we had been placed within. It was as if this ultimate achievement of ours signalled that we had passed the test. The organo-plasti-metal construct, or whatever it was, faded and we found ourselves on the surface of a world noticeably different from the one where the ships graveyard lay. Our suits, and other instrumentation, had started to power up, thankfully and we put them back on.
For a brief moment we just stood there taking in our surroundings. The environment outside the organo-plasti-metal construct. With our portable equipment powering up we had just begun to take scientific measurements. It was a wholly more pleasant environment than the star ship graveyard.
“I think some entities are watching us,” said the Lilluthian. “Some entities in plain view and quite close but so different from us that neither your minds nor your instrumentation can recognise it as intelligent life. With my experience of alien races I am accommodating my cognitive processes in order to perceive them.
Before our Lilluthian passenger could do that we were teleported, somewhat hastily it seemed, back to the star ship grave yard where we had first been brought. Teleported, clearly I thought, between worlds in the same star system.
“What did you see just before we were teleported,” I asked.
“Not much,” replied the Lilluthian “I don’t believe those who detained us wanted to be seen but there was a sense of their intent.”
“What did you sense?” I asked.
“I sensed we were being photographed in some way,” answered the Lilluthian. “Photographed and catalogued.”
“As an Earth entomologist might photograph and catalogue insect life?” I asked.
“No.” was the reply “I don’t believe it’s that simple.”
“I think we have, in some way, passed the test that we were subjected to,” continued our Lilluthian passenger “though perhaps not with flying colours.”
“Just a C minus?” I suggested. A suggestion somehow lost on our passenger.
I looked among the star ships. Some such as the Frazzen and Dreen star ships had gone. Yet the Spleelth star ship remained and there was an arrival that had come after us that I didn’t recognise. It was definitely not a Parg ship. At least not any that I’d seen. Too fundamentally different.
I realised we had really learned very little at all about the Brolden anomaly though I suspected this system’s occupiers had learned quite a lot about us. And presumably all of the other races whose star ships had at some time or other ended up in the star ship grave yard.
Full power had been returned to our star ship and we took off without any undue delay. Under our own power and at just sub light speed we headed back out of the system. On our long range scanners and outside the furthest reaches of this star system we detected the Parg. Only two vessels now so that perhaps the other two had left the system or perhaps they were lurking elsewhere inside the system.
“Head back in to the Brolden Anomaly,” I ordered unhesitatingly. Something deep within convincing me that this was the right decision. Both our Lilluthian passenger and my number two smiled and nodded in agreement.
We didn’t get very far before the teleportation affect took a hold of us again. This time taking us instantly out far beyond the other side of the star system. I sensed that it was the break we needed to get away from the Parg.
“It looks like the occupants of this system have decided to give us a little bit of a helping hand,” I said to whoever was in listening distance.
On our journey back to Earth we dropped out of hyperspace several times and just waited looking for signs of pursuit from the Parg. There were none.
“We should contact the Frazzen,” I said “about their experiences in the Brolden Anomaly. An information exchange.” Though I realised we didn’t have much information to exchange. We weren’t on speaking terms with the Dreen and I didn’t really want to approach the Spleelth just yet. I was conscious also that our passenger’s race the Lilluthians was particularly cosy with the Frazzen.
It turned out that the crew of the “captured” Frazzen star ship had been subjected to exactly the same type of experience a
s we had. They interpreted it as a test they had passed and they were allowed to leave the Brolden anomaly in their star ship just as we had been. The Frazzen too had a brief moment where their powered up instrumentation took some measurements outside of the organo-plasti-metal construct they had been housed in. They also had a Lilluthian travelling with them.
We also learned that a Frazzen rescue mission had witnessed repeated Parg attempts to enter the Brolden Anomaly. Each of these attempts frustrated by teleportation of the Parg to the opposite side of the star system. I guess they just weren’t welcome hereabouts.
By comparing notes we, the Frazzen, and the Lilluthians were able to arrive at a very small kernel of knowledge about the Brolden Anomaly. Just something we might be able to build on in the future.
Those who held sway in the Brolden Anomaly, whatever their ultimate nature, had been prepared to assist us against the Parg and perhaps they could be persuaded to do so again.
It was something we intended to cautiously follow up on.
End
The Change Field
The Australian Outback
2055
I was totally lost by the time I stumbled across him. My ultra light exo-skeleton had been damaged as had my em powered transport frame (along with its gps system). So I was now reduced to walking speed. Make that slow walking speed given my physical condition. The old adage never travel in the outback alone was never more true than now. Technology notwithstanding.
I was surprised to come across him. He had the look of a well healed Aussie swagman. Almost a contradiction in terms. Brewing his billy tea and cooking some damper on a very inviting open fire. Wearing an Akubra hat and drizabone rain coat. His accent almost too thickly, too richly Australian. It occurred to me that appearances can be deceiving.
Still I spent the night in his encampment. It was late when I stumbled on him and there was food and water here and it felt very warm and safe. The supposed bushman’s billy tea was strangely invigorating and the damper also renewed my flagging energies. He had offered to show me the way back to the nearest township, one of the new mobile towns, in the morning. There were no static towns hereabouts anymore.
A Collection of Science Fiction Gems Page 2