by T. R. Harris
Adam wasn’t out to defeat the Klin; all he wanted was their knowledge, and possibly a little revenge. As far as he knew, the Klin were the only creatures in this part of the galaxy who knew the location of Earth. So rather than head off into the unexplored Far Arm in a futile search for an unknown world, Adam began to concentrate on finding one of these Klin bases first.
Besides, for interrupting his comfortable life back on Earth, Adam felt the Klin owed him – a lot.
Chapter Three
Giodol felt good being back on his ship. It had been sixty-four days since he had last come aboard. With his duties as the Interim-Overlord of Sector 17, he barely had enough time for adequate sleep periods, much less to leave the planet and travel up to his flagship, in orbit around Melfora Lum. In fact, he still wore the light-green mane of a Guard, rather than the blue of an Overlord. He had not even had time to display the privileges of rank.
The duties of Overlord were well above his training and abilities. He knew it, as did most of the others who had to deal with him on a regular basis. This included his two Junior Counselors.
With Juirean society so rigid and planned, it was very rare for a Guard, such as himself, to be elevated to the rank of Overlord. From the earliest age, all Juirean males were screened and analyzed to determine their best role in the society, based upon aptitude, intelligence and physical abilities. They would then spend their early, formative years, studying for that role exclusively. Since before he could remember, Giodol had been trained as a Guard, not as an Overlord.
The Guards were the soldiers, the backbone of The Expansion, manning the fleets and the ground forces, and doing the bidding of Counselors and Overlords, as well as the ultimate wishes of the Elites. They were the order-keepers of The Expansion.
Giodol had been perfectly content with this arrangement and quite proud of his life-long role and accomplishments. He was now an elder Juirean, nearing 173 standard years in age, and he had spent the majority of that time aboard starships. Before the unfortunate incident with the derelict Klin spaceship, Giodol had been a Fleet Commander, a glorious, if slightly misleading title for the head of the 16-ship Juirean contingent in Sector 17 – commonly referred to as The Fringe. It was a hapless assignment, and one only a Juirean nearing the twilight of his career would even covet. Nothing ever happened in The Fringe. It was a slow and boring existence. But Giodol had been okay with that.
That all changed when the Klin ship exploded, killing the young Overlord Oplim Ra Unis and his Senior Counselor Deslor Lin Jul. That devastating event had left a gaping void in the Juirean hierarchy in the Sector, and sent a ripple effect throughout The Expansion. Even then, there were not a lot of volunteers from other parts of The Expansion rushing to fill the void.
So Giodol had been advanced – although temporarily – to the rank of Overlord, along with all the duties and responsibilities that the job entailed.
And if all those responsibilities weren’t enough, it was all about to get a lot more complicated…
Giodol stood before the massive viewport of his flagship and watched as the newest members of his fleet came into view and took up positions near his ship, their chemical engines spitting out blue tongues of gas as they slowed to a stop. The space before him was littered with spaceships of all sizes and classifications, including one massive ship, larger than anything he’d ever seen before. In the span of an hour, his small fleet of 16 ships had more than tripled.
The jewel of the additions was the UN-444, the only Class-7 starship he had ever seen. It dwarfed his own flagship by a factor of ten, and actually carried in its massive hold six light battlecruisers, the kind of which made up the bulk of his own fleet.
Overlord Yan’wal was aboard the UN-444, a freelance Senior Overlord and personal envoy of the Juirean Council. He was legend among the ruling class, destined for a position on the Council itself.
And he had come to see Giodol.
Since the Juirean race was so regimented and serious regarding their role as leaders of the known galaxy, rank normally did not intimidate them to any large degree. The vast majority of Juireans had their life-long designated positions, and went about their jobs as efficiently as possible. They therefore had no fear of superiors. And since their positions within the structure had been bred into them from an early age, ambition for advancement was also very rare. Juireans advanced solely through ability and accomplishment – and occasionally, through circumstance. That was the reason Giodol was more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his life, and this strange feeling made him even more unsure of himself. He would say he was nervous, if he understood the concept.
At the proper time, Giodol and his contingent boarded a shuttle for the short journey to the UN-444. For a moment, as he marveled at the immense size of the starship, Giodol forgot his trepidation. He had served aboard dozens of ships in his years but he had never seen anything as glorious as this. Each layer of the hull was built of progressively shorter lengths, with the longest section making up what would be the keel of the ship. Then each subsequent layer grew progressively shorter, and offset slightly toward the stern of the ship. Finally, the skewed pyramid was topped off with a massive bridge section, aglow with light from its expansive, 180-degree forward viewport. The bridge section itself was nearly half the size of Giodol’s entire flagship.
Once aboard, it was still another ten minutes before his group made it to the enormous priority quarters where the Overlord was staying. The ante room was easily thirty meters across, with ceilings reaching ten meters high. The sheer volume of the room, especially aboard a spaceship, was quite awe-inspiring.
His group was escorted into a smaller conference room, where the Overlord was waiting.
Giodol had been notified that Lord Yan’wal was not coming to The Fringe to replace him – another Overlord would soon arrive for that. Yan’wal was there to coordinate the search for the Klin.
The new Overlord was surprised to hear this news, coming as it did several months ago now, and only days after the death of Overlord Oplim. As far as Giodol knew, no one had relayed any communication to Juir regarding the possible existence of the Klin. Further, he had learned that Oplim and Deslor had hidden any information regarding the Klin from everyone in their command – including Giodol. It wasn’t until he received the frantic link from Lord Oplim, just moments before he died, that Giodol even had any knowledge of – or belief in – the continued existence of the Klin.
It was common knowledge among all members of The Expansion that nearly 4,000 years before, right at the beginning of the Juirean rise to power in the galaxy, the Juireans had attacked and exterminated the Klin race. The Klin – the default leaders of the Seven World Common Alliance, the precursor to the Juirean Expansion – were the technological wizards of the Alliance, and it was their tight-fisted and unfair control of this technology that had made them the mortal enemy of the Juireans.
Yet the Juireans would get the last laugh.
At the time of The Reckoning, the Juireans raided the Klin homeworld and wiped it clean of all life forms higher than that of a rodent. Even now the planet was used primarily as a storage world for raw material coming into the Juirean production centers near the Core.
Of course, rumors still persisted through the ages that some of the Klin had survived, and were in hiding, just waiting for the right time to make their presence known. Giodol had heard all these stories, but he had never heard nor seen any concrete evidence that would prove the rumors true.
Not until Oplim’s link.
Forever etched in Giodol’s memory would be the image of the beaten and bloodied Overlord, his great mane of blue hair matted and burnt, staring wide-eyed from the screen and declaring, “The Klin exist!”
Even then, the ramblings of the Overlord were quickly dismissed, at least in The Fringe. Yes, the mysterious ship he and Counselor Deslor were aboard had exploded, taking with it any proof of its origin. Yet the simple fact that all records of the ship had been removed fro
m the Library only added to the mystery.
Giodol, at the direction of the Juirean Authority, had begun an immediate investigation into the mystery ship and the death of the Juirean officials. He soon found that technicians had been working on recovering data from the ship’s computer core, but they had been unsuccessful in the facilities on Melfora Lum. Just before the explosion, they had transported the core up to the ship in orbit.
And then it exploded, so even that evidence was gone.
And yet there were still traceable events surrounding the movements of the ship itself. Giodol had learned it had been brought to Melfora Lum from Nimor at about the same time the young Overlord was ordering him to recover the ship’s computer core from the Fringe Pirates. As it turned out, the pirates never did have the core, but somehow, Oplim had still acquired it.
In light of all the information Giodol had collected, his only conclusion was that the mystery ship was more-than-likely a Klin starship. If this were true, then the whole dynamic of the galactic power structure could change. If the Klin did exist, and had been in hiding for 4,000 years, what evil could they bring upon the Juirean race?
Overlord Yan’wal had spent the past seven months traveling from Juir to The Fringe. Yes, there were other Overlords much closer who could have led the hunt for the Klin, yet the Council had decided that this information was much too important to be broadcast across The Expansion and left to a more junior Overlord. Even though rumors were bound to surface regarding Yan’wal’s mission, the Council felt it was better to keep the number of people who actually knew of the Klin to the barest minimum.
So Yan’wal had come to lead the search. And his first task was to debrief Giodol, who was now seated to the Overlord’s right, while all the other Jurieans seated around the massive conference table were staring at him.
There were twenty-two Juireans seated at the table, more of his own race together in one location than he’d seen in over ten standard years. Being so small and inconsequential to the affairs of The Expansion, The Fringe had never had more than ten Juireans in the entire Sector. Until now.
As they stared, Giodol began to experience that strange feeling again, and he actually began to sweat…
“We have all spent a very long time getting to this point,” Lord Yan’wal began. Instantly, all eyed locked on him. “I will now summarize our tactical plans for the benefit of Lord Giodol and his staff.”
A screen on the wall behind Yan’wal came to life, displaying a graphic representation of The Fringe. Highlighted was the planet Nimor, near the center of the spread of twelve named planets forming a crude crescent and bordering the vast emptiness of The Void. There was a short red line running to the left of Nimor on the inner edge of The Void, then a dotted straight line running from the solid red line until it intersected with the planet Dimloe.
“If we assume that the Klin ship continued on a straight-line course from the point of the attack,” Yan’wal continued, “we would place Dimloe as its final destination. We cannot be sure, since the ship may have taken evasive action once confronted by the pirates.
“So our strategy will be multi-fold. Fleet Commander Siegor will take a contingent to Dimloe and look for any trace of the Klin there. Meanwhile, Senior Guard Commander Lod’fin will take a force into the Far Arm and begin a systematic survey of the worlds there, ranging out to ten light years from The Barrier. We have crude records to work from, but they have not been updated for over seventy standard years when Sector 17 was first included in The Expansion. It would be logical that if the Klin had a larger base of operations, they would have placed it beyond The Barrier, but close enough to The Fringe to maintain contact with the operations of The Expansion.”
He paused briefly as he swept a hand toward the left side of the table. “Lord Giodol, Senior Counselor Arolus and his assistants here will assume most of the day-to-day responsibilities of governing the Sector to free you up to pursue my bidding. You will be assigned two new Senior Counselors.” He looked down the table at Giodol’s current Counselors. “This is no reflection on your competency,” he said to them. There was no reaction on their faces. “You will be placed under the command of Counselor Arolus for reassignment of duties. Your experience with the functioning of the Sector will be of great value to them.”
Yan’wal then addressed the right side of the table. “Under direction of Specialist Eannwen, his team will be responsible for the investigating and correlation of all information regarding the Klin and their rumored presence in the Sector. He will coordinate with Lord Giodol for any information that can be gleaned from former Overlord’s records, including his private notes, transmissions and the like.
“As it turns out, Lord Oplim and Counselor Deslor had been obsessed with the Klin myth for a very long time. Their suspicions appear now to have been correct. We must not take anything they may have said or done throughout their careers as wild ravings. If we do succeed in discovering the Klin, and eradicating their threat from The Expansion, their names will go down in Juirean history as heroes of our race.
“As usual, most of our operations off-planet will be performed by trusted agents. Lord Giodol and his staff will in invaluable in providing our teams with the names of these individuals.”
Again the Overlord paused and scanned the others seated at the table. The pause was for effect, and it definitely did raise the gravity of the meeting in Giodol’s mind. Since the time of that frantic link with Overlord Oplim, Giodol had been uncertain as to his role in the upcoming events. Now he had a better idea. Still, he wasn’t altogether sure he was up for the task.
Finally Yan’wal spoke: “All of you seated here have had ample time to weigh the significance of our mission. At this time we do not know the extent of the threat the Klin may pose to The Expansion. What little we do know of the Klin starship tells us that their mastery of technology has not suffered since The Reckoning. The fact that they could have built such a ship, while remaining completely hidden from us, is very troubling. Therefore we must assume that they are a grave threat – and that the confirmation of their existence is not information that can be openly discussed.”
He took a deep breath before continuing. “We are here to find and destroy any remaining Klin – along with their allies, which we assume they have.” He glanced over at Giodol at that last comment, which caused Giodol to shift in his seat. “Our mission is of the utmost importance to the Council and to our race. We must not fail.”
He turned to the Juirean seated directly to his left. “Counselor Haden is my Senior Counselor. He will be your direct link to me. All contacts must go through him unless directed personally by me. I will remain aboard the UN-444, along with my staff. The rest of you, who are not attached to a fleet, will set up operations on Melfora Lum. That is all.”
Immediately, and without a word, every Juirean at the table rose and headed for the exit. Yan’wal reached out a hand and placed it on Giodol’s arm. “Please join me in my quarters in ten minutes,” he commanded, and then he too rose and left the room.
Chapter Four
Precisely ten minutes later, Giodol entered Lord Yan’wal’s quarters, and was momentarily stunned by what he saw. The room was gigantic, even by Juirean standards. Like most Juirean living quarters, it consisted of one huge room with partitions separating the sleeping and working quarters. But along the two opposite side walls were massive, twenty-meter high drapes of purple, orange and green, flowing from floor to ceiling in swaths of fabric. The varying angles of the drapes produced deep black shadows, contrasting with the vibrant colors; recessed spot lights cast brilliant pyramids of light on the drapes and accentuated the sharpness of the colors. The whole affect was stunning, and reminded Giodol of a fiery sunset on Juir from his early years.
Overlord Yan’wal sat behind an ornate stone desk at the far end of the room. Giodol approached and was motioned to take a seat facing the Overlord. To the left of the desk was a two-meter-square monitor resting atop a marble stand. On the monitor
was a frozen image of what Giodol recognized as the office of the late Counselor Deslor. In the image, the Counselor was seated at his desk, and standing before him, also frozen in time, stood four other creatures, guarded by a handful of heavily-armed Rigorians.
Yan’wal looked up from his inlaid desk monitor. “Lord Giodol, I know the present situation has disrupted your normal career path,” he began, “but I assure you that your efforts on behalf of The Expansion will be rewarded.”
“That is not necessary, My Lord. I only live to serve.”
“Very admirable, but nonetheless, your efforts are appreciated.” He then turned his attention to the large monitor. “As you know, the activities of Overlord Oplim and his Senior Counselor did not go unnoticed by the Authority. Oplim was a very gifted and promising young Overlord. As you know, all of our abilities are carefully monitored by the Authority, and from such monitoring, career paths – and expectations – are formulated.” He slowly shook his head. “So when a promising young talent such as Oplim requests assignment to an obscure Sector, notice was taken and questions asked.
“You may not know, but Oplim’s obsession with the Klin myths and rumors goes back over twenty years. He has been tracked following up on Klin folklore throughout most of The Expansion. So it was concluded that his request for assignment to The Fringe must have been as a direct result of his research. And so he was monitored even closer.”
Giodol was only slightly surprised by this revelation. He, himself, monitored the activities of his senior staff; it was common practice among Juireans, not because of any real suspicions, but rather as a way of sorting out the best prospects for advancement. Juireans seldom requested advancement on their own. Most times it was offered to them based upon their performance. And the best way to judge a person’s performance was to keep a watchful eye on all their activities.