USS Kepler Dawn

by Gerald Lane Summers

  After completing our interior comforts, stacking blankets into a bed and piling the pillows to our liking, we decided to build a campfire and sit on a log outside. We roasted various foodstuffs over the fire and consumed another bottle of the nice cabernet wine the captain had given us for the trip. I was starting to feel much better and could see Miki was now prepared to relax. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from our combined psyches and we decided to do what we did best. Enjoy each other.

  Miki cuddled with me, stuck her tongue into my ear and tried to run away. She didn’t make it far before I dragged her down and started nuzzling her wherever I could make her laugh. It was time for play, and play we did.

  Sometime during the night, Miki mentioned that she’d been thinking of marriage. I turned on my side, supporting myself with my left arm and elbow. I did not waste time agreeing with her.

  “I’m ready, I think, to have a child,” she said.

  “I sat up straight. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Is it because we will be leaving again soon?”

  “No,” she said. “I just feel it is time. Maybe it’s my hormones acting up, I don’t know. And, frankly, it makes no difference why. I have been obsessed with the idea and yes, I would like to raise the child on board Kepler Dawn. If we raise it there, it may be an adult by the time we reach wherever we are going.”

  I agreed, thinking primarily of making sure the child was well cared for in its youth. Kepler Dawn had everything we could possibly want, I added, and I had never intended to stay forever on a planet anywhere. I was a man of space and intended to keep it that way.

  It was a wonderful night, one that kept me waking at odd hours and putting my arm around Miki, snuggling against her backside and whispering in her ear. We were once again about to embark on a new stage in our lives.

  The following morning, we stepped out of the shelter to watch the red star pop up over the cliff tops. Again, it was spectacular as its red glow cast its morning light on the opposite cliffs. They seemed to change colors as the light slowly crawled downward toward the base of the far cliff and an opening where another creek intersected the river. I stared back into its mouth and thought momentarily of trying to find out what might be up there. We had nothing planned, so I suggested it to Miki. She looked at me like I was nuts.

  “Why go up that way? It looks rough, we’d have to cross the river and I think it might be more fun to just follow it from this side. We might even find some ruins to pick through. The survey team mentioned such places, with caves and very old fossils. Maybe we could find something to remind us of this day?”

  “Okay, that sounds good to me. Let’s secure the ship and take some water along. I see no need to repack the tent, do you?”

  “No, and I’d like to spend more time here before we search for another nice place.”

  All indications were that Dawn had very little indigenous animal life, other than its fish and a few species of birds. The fish would have been protected from the ancient radiation by the stream water it swam in and birds were notorious survivors, known to have evolved from dinosaurs back on Earth. How they had evolved here was anyone’s guess. Everything else of significance had been killed off when the aliens attacked and the nuclear weapon had been dropped on their colony. What was left had not had time to evolve into many new species.

  So far, the colonists had not concerned themselves with restocking the animals on Dawn, thinking it more important to square their contract with the Umon first.

  I had agreed with their decision and thought it a good omen for the future. Still, they were working on a stable ecological system and had already cloned larger animals from frozen eggs and other cells we had brought along. One day, the planet would be overrun with every kind of life, at least those that had existed on Earth. It would be a paradise if the aliens did not come back.

  Without fear of snakes, lions, tigers or bears, I decided to leave the plasma pistol that all ships were equipped with in its holster under the dashboard. It made Miki nervous to see me wearing it, so I did not.

  Our walk had extended almost a mile though tall reeds and precarious river edges before we saw something of interest. Half way up the right side cliff, I noted what I thought might be an ancient trail. Most of it was gone, but millennia of wind and rain had not totally destroyed the mark it had left.

  There was no way to get up to the old trail, so we kept on going until we rounded a bend a quarter of a mile farther on. There we could make out the trail more clearly and it appeared to end at what looked to be an ancient rock shelter. It was not man-made and I guessed it was simply a place where intelligent beings might have hidden from a storm.

  We clambered up the cliff, jumping from rock to rock until we could look inside the flat opening. It was dark inside and before it were signs of old charcoal fires and stone tools. Apparently it had at one time been occupied by a pre-sentient species that had developed in a manner similar to the way mankind had developed, a little step here, a little step there until they were able to dominate the planet.

  I took out my portable communicator, which had a built in light and waved it around the dark cave. It turned to the left after about twenty feet further in and I could see no more.

  “Do you want to go in?” I asked.

  “Why not,” she said. “Be careful not to step on anything important. The archaeologists will have us for lunch if we damage their territory.”

  “Yeah, they do tend to be proprietary about old bones and such.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  I handed the light to Miki after the turn and let her lead. She was an adventurous sort, always curious about strange places and right now I wanted to be nice to her. She was, after all, about to produce our first child.

  We found little to interest us and shortly came to the back end of the tunnel. Something about the wall there attracted my attention. It seemed too flat to be real.

  “Hold on, Miki. This does not look natural. What do you think?”

  She held the light up to the wall and gasped. “It looks like a very old metal door covered with dust.” She rubbed away some of the dust and revealed a symbol of some kind. I took out my portable phone and took a picture of it. It looked like a child’s version of a stick figure. An insect — and it had eight legs.

  “Oh, shit.” I whispered. “This could be a lair or hibernation chamber for the ancient aliens. Let’s get the hell out of here before we disturb something.”

  Miki had already turned around and was heading out when I heard the same telemetry sound that we’d heard from the Umon in their description of the alien communication. We’d triggered some kind of a warning device.

  Chapter 36

  We wasted no time scrambling back down the cliff and onto the riverside track. I looked back as we started to run. That old intuition told me something was coming. If so, it was not moving fast.

  I considered the situation as I settled into a run. If there were alien ant creatures in there, they must have been in hibernation for a very long time and would require time to recuperate. Nevertheless, I had an inkling we were in trouble and had better get our asses in gear.

  Miki was leading and making a very fast beeline for our vessel. I had trouble keeping up. She had been a runner all of her life and rarely missed an opportunity to jog the entire ship when free to do so. I could move too, but not as well as she.

  When we got back to the ship, I noted activity off in the bushes against the cliff where we had camped. The tops of the riverine brush were thrashing around as if something was wandering around in it, unsure of its direction.

  “Hurry,” I whispered. “They may have come down a different way. Something’s definitely over there in the brush.”

  “Yes,” Miki, gasped. “And there is more than just one.”

  “Computer,” I said into my ship’s com. “Open the cockpit. We are being chased. Expedite.”

  The ladder promptly came down and Miki started her
scramble up. She fairly flew across the cockpit to the right side seat and I was just beginning the climb when I remembered the tent. I did not want to leave it, because it now had meaning for me. Our first child may have been conceived there.

  I ran over to it, pushed the “store” button and watched as it rapidly folded itself back into a compact packet. I opened the side storage door on the fuselage of the fighter and tossed the whole thing in.

  “Hurry up,” Miki yelled. “It’s almost upon us.”

  I ran to the ladder and started climbing it two steps at a time.

  Just as I was about to dive into the cockpit, something grabbed my left leg. It hurt like hell.

  I turned around and kicked the black ant-like alien in the face. It had not used its pinchers, just a stretched out right front leg. I kicked it again.

  The damned thing was big enough to stand on its hind legs and bite me if it chose, but it did not. I had a brief thought that it might intend to capture me, and that gave me a burst of energy unlike any I had ever experienced. All of a sudden, the ant’s head blew open, scattering all kinds of crap over me and the fighter. The smell of a phased plasma pistol rushed up my nose.

  I dove into the control seat and yelled to Miki. “Close the cockpit, secure for take-off and start the engine.”

  I could hear the whine of the AG engine and noted at the same time another large insectivore wobble out of the tall weeds. It too was black, unsteady on its feet, but clearly determined to get to us before we left the ground. “Damn.”

  We were slowly ascending as the engine spooled up to full power. “Computer, open the side window.”

  I reached back to Miki and she handed me the pistol. I re-energized it and stuck it out just as the creature arrived. It grabbed the left landing strut that had yet to be retracted and hung on as we lifted off. It continued to do that until I fried it. I hit it right in the face where its pinchers had been clacking as if trying to bite the strut off. Its head exploded.

  Glancing down at my uniform, I noticed I’d been thoroughly splattered by the two aliens, their blood or something black that filled their heads covered most of my chest. Yuk!

  The ship started gathering speed as it climbed and I decided to see if a little strafing would do any good. I activated and armed the nose mounted plasma cannon and took the controls in my right hand. In an instant, I had the craft swooping back in a circle and noted four more of the insects standing where we had been. One of them was flapping its forward legs. Ragged looking material was being shed from side appendages and I took that to mean they were growing new wings.

  My God, they do have wings, I thought. The scientists had mentioned the fossils they had found may have possessed wings. I had not believed them because it most ant species did not. The only ones to have them were queens. These were not queens. They couldn’t have been for the simple reason there were too many of them. The others were waving their front legs, shreds of the old wings hanging off of them as if asking us to come back. Yeah, okay, I thought.

  When I fired the four large plasma cannon, the blinding light that erupted from the nose shocked me. It instantly burned the entire area where the aliens had been, leaving nothing but a hole, smoking grasses and blackened bodies.

  I started to turn around again and Miki suggested we return to the cave and light it up too.

  I did, and this time I put the ship in hover mode right in front of the rock shelter. After firing a two second burst into it, I stopped to see what I had done. Everything the plasma had touched had been melted and everything around it had either vaporized or burned. I did not think the shot could have destroyed the nest and there was no way the concentrated fire could have hit the door directly because of the left turn in the cave. If the guns had hit it squarely, perhaps it would have. We would now have to come back with more firepower.

  Never having fired a ship’s cannon before, I decided to make one more pass. The insects had clearly come out from another entrance not far from where we had parked the fighter. We could not see it because of all of the river weeds. So, I decided to see if we could burn them away and expose the exit.

  This time, I accelerated the ship and started firing from a longer distance. The smoking plasma swept along the bottom edge of the cliff, burning all of the brush, tulle reeds and weeds, and exposed another cave. Two other aliens were there, watching. They were dead before they could have done us any harm, even if they had had weapons.

  My first thought was to contact the AI computer. But as before, we were so far away from it on the other side of the planet, that we could not make contact. I instructed the fighter’s computer to take us to twenty thousand feet so I could contact the ship.

  The ship zoomed up rapidly and leveled off. “Computer, connect me with Kepler Dawn. Specifically, the AI computer.”

  “Done.”

  “Jean-Luk, we have encountered some of the aliens here on Dawn down in the southern canyon. I’ve destroyed several of them. They were in a cave, apparently hibernating before we stumbled upon them. Alert the captain and the Umon.

  If you were tracking me, please note the location.”

  “Yes, Commander. The captain has now ordered a response force. You should be seeing them soon. And by the way, I track all members of the crew all the time. Because you have been so far away on the other side of the planet, I could only determine your general location, not what you were doing. Nevertheless, I was able to communicate with your ship’s computer by bouncing a signal off of the planet’s upper atmosphere and knew you were in trouble.”

  “Thank you. We will be on our way back to the ship. It has been a rather harrowing experience and we both remain in need of R&R. In fact, that is why we were there in the first place.”

  “Commanders. If you are both in need of R&R, as you call it, you should report to sick bay as soon as you return.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right. And, we have some samples of the ant’s blood that need to be analyzed.”

  I looked down at my uniform shirt. The black substance was still there. I tried not to touch it but thought if I did not secure what I had it might all fall off of the self-cleaning material and get sucked up by the ship’s automatic vacuum system.

  “Miki, find something to scrape off this black critter. We need to save some to be analyzed.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Doctor Dundee called me shortly after we’d deposited the samples with him. “I’ve seen this stuff before, Commander,” he said. “It has a high iron content, a low level of platelets and is chock full of chemicals used for hibernation. The hibernation chemicals would act more like a preservative than a pill for a good winter’s sleep. Urea and creatinine levels are also high. This would not be unusual for a creature in hibernation for thousands of years.”

  Chapter 37

  Ireported to the bridge, took the blind leap to the black floor and connected myself to the AI computer. Commander Boggs had placed the ship directly over the canyon and its magnificence was spread out before me. If a battle did ensue, I would be in a position to assist the captain or Commander Boggs with appropriate information and command suggestions.

  Most of the bridge watch had reported to the hanger bays so they could participate in whatever battle might develop. Virtually all of Kepler Dawn’s officers were trained AG fighter pilots and when together, amounted to a serious force. The remaining specialists stayed with their sensors to keep track of everything moving within a thousand miles.

  “Jean-Luk,” I said. “Upload the video from my fighter to all of the others. They need to know what they will be up against.”

  I then directed the computer to have my fighter serviced in case it was needed and sent the video of my attack to the captain’s up-link. He then uploaded and distributed it widely to the others now heading out to confront the remaining aliens. I specifically warned it to make sure all of the pilots knew the aliens might be capable of atmospheric flight. How they might conduct a fight from there, I had no idea. It was a
scary proposition and brought up visions of seriously crazy air battles.

  “What do you think?” Jean-Luk. Are those wings just for moving around on the planet or could they use them to attack our fighters?”

  “The likelihood is that they use them for short distances, as do most flying insects and I doubt if they would rely on carry-weapons. Right now I believe their wings are probably non-functional. They are likely in the process of growing new ones and I have no idea how long that will take.

  Their traditional fighting methods are to overwhelm enemies with large numbers of their kind, bite and/or sting them to death. After that, they remove the bodies to their nests and use them for food.

  The Umon did say the aliens they’d fought long ago had used ‘stick’ weapons with light beams. So we must assume they are not completely like all other ants.”

  “Yeah, so I guess that means we will not be able to talk nice to them?”

  “Diplomacy would likely be ignored. They are not capable of getting along with others. They have one job and they do it until ordered to do something else.”

  “Did Captain Hollenbeck go out with the others?”

  “Yes, both he and Commander Smyth are leading the attack.”

  I thought about that for a second, my first thought being that it was a good idea. Then, it dawned on me that it was not. “Damn, did you try to talk him out of it?

  “Yes, but he would not listen. He is a warrior and so is Commander Smyth. They were not going to miss out on a good fight, which is what they both said.”

  “Connect me to him, please.”

  “Captain Hollenbeck, this is Commander Andy Kelso. What is your status?”

  “Good morning, Andy. We’re just fine. I’m leading two squadrons and coming up on the canyon location now. We have not seen any of the aliens yet, airborne other otherwise.”

  “I think you will, soon. My guess is that they are still recuperating from hibernation and will come out when they are fully recovered. Somehow, we triggered an alarm that woke up a guard unit.”