‘Come with me’.
He eyed the guard suspiciously.
‘Why?’
The guard looked resigned. Even on this planet there were limits, and he could not physically drag the old man along.
‘The Mission Director wants to see you.’
The steward smiled. His thoughts did not go directly to the possibility of more whisky, but the idea did occur to him. He stood up, dusted himself down, and prepared to follow the guard.
It was the first time he had been out of the compound for months, and he was shocked to see the barren wilderness of spoil heaps that they drove through. Arriving at the compound, he saw a dragon standing absolutely motionless in the centre of a large open space to one side of the car park. He had never met Christian before and was interested to see what one of the legendary outcasts would look like.
As soon as he entered the room he could see what had happened. The Director had a problem and his immediate reaction was to call a meeting. The steward had never heard of all of the books full of theories of problem solving that the Director had studied, but he had seen it done often enough. This was a meeting to pass out blame and to prepare the ground for passing out more blame if things got worse. The steward had the impression that he had been brought along as a repository of last resort, to be blamed if nobody more influential could be made to take it.
Nobody wanted to be there.
The steward could immediately recognise Christian. He had never seen the man before, but he was one of few who did not come from the ship, and he was also first in line to get the blame. The Director was working on him.
‘You told me the tower had all powerful weapons in it. You agreed to stop her coming through that way. I respected your people and gave them privileges and you have let us down.’
Christian was having none of it. His patience with the Director had been wearing thin for some weeks, and now he had lost a number of good friends and was angry. He reminded the Director that he had never offered to use the tower for defence. His people would have been reluctant to use devices built by Mages and not very good when they did use them.
‘You said that you had done things to your shuttles so Lynella could not stop them. You said that the powers of my people were of interest but probably little use.’ This was true, and the Director knew it. The Abbot, however, sitting next to the Director and also looking worried, did not. He said nothing and let the man solve his own problems.
Next the Director turned on a man in uniform at the far end of the table. The steward’s eyesight was not what it had once been, but he could just read the name badge which read ‘Acting Captain’. It made sense to him, Captain Turner had gone with Lynella. He remembered the Captain from when they had been introduced when they had stopped briefly at the castle. He had been polite and pleasant and showed genuine concern for those staying behind. The Director was in full flow:
‘We need to know where they are. We need shuttles. Why are the fuel tanks of Atlanta empty?’
‘They fuel was all used during the landing. For safety reasons we left them empty until they need to be filled for take-off.’
The steward was shocked that he was being permitted to hear this discussion. The Director must have such a low opinion of him that he thought him quite unable to use information of any type. He remembered the brave fisherman he had sent out to take the message to Lynella about the mining camp. He was reassured. If the man had been caught this would not be happening. The Director had moved on.
‘And none of the satellites are working?’
‘No. They failed when the tower was destroyed.’
‘Why were they so badly made?’
The man looked resigned. The steward pictured him with a personality similar to the Captain, professional and very competent and polite but with little time for fools. ‘I shall file a report to the mission administration to determine responsibility for the specification.’ That was all he said, no mention of any attempt to repair them. The director went red with anger. The Steward fought to suppress a smile. Lynella had certainly done something this time. Nobody had a clue where she was.
There was a moment of complete silence. Nobody dared say anything. The Director looked at his secretary and she swiftly produced a box of cigars. He carefully chose one and made a point of offering one to the Abbot. Nobody else was offered and the Abbot refused so the Director lit his cigar while everybody else patiently watched and waited to see what he would do next. He turned to the Abbot.
‘Can you stop her?’ He asked bluntly. ‘You stopped her last time and protected the ship while it was landing.’
The steward wondered if the Director still genuinely believed this. On this occasion, he had to say it, that was understood. But did he still believe it after he had been told the truth many times? It looked as if he did.
‘No.’ The Abbot replied simply. ‘Our machines were almost completely destroyed defending your ship and many of our people died. You have given us no help in rebuilding our machine, so we have made little progress.’
‘So, this time you can do nothing to stop her attacking Atlanta.’
The Abbot waved his hand to clear away a cloud of cigar smoke that was moving towards him and asked. ‘Do you really think she wants to destroy Atlanta? She could have done it last time if she had wanted. The ring she sent at the fuel plant – it could have done so much damage it would have taken you years to repair it.’
‘She just threw that ring at the source.’ The Director replied. ‘The fuel plant was a lucky hit. She would have hit the ship if she could. How could she control it?’
The Abbot looked at Christian and then at the Steward himself. They were unlikely allies to help him try to explain to the Director the massive gap in his understanding of the powers of a Mage.
At that moment the door was thrown open and a man rushed in. Seeing the meeting he immediately slowed down and walked across to the Director’s secretary as discretely as possible. It was a pointless effort. All eyes were on him as he whispered to the secretary and she wrote what he said on the pad of paper that she had ready for the purpose and handed it to the Director. The Director stood and rushed out of the meeting dropping cigar ash on the secretary’s hair as he went.
The paper remained on the table. The Abbot grabbed it before the secretary could reclaim it. He then pushed her roughly out of the way and rushed after the Director.
The Acting Captain looked up. ‘Come on Janice, are you going to tell us what it said?’
She brushed the ash out of her hair and looked uncertain for a moment before looking up. ‘Ship in orbit’ she said.
28
Admiral Charles Sydney paced the bridge of the Unicorn and admired the view of the Atlanta below him. He remembered his visit to see the great ship under construction ten years previously. He had been impressed by the size of it. The bridge could easily fit twenty men in comfort as opposed to his own which was just three paces from end to end. He had also been impressed by the revolutionary design, but the Engineers with him had been less so. They had eagerly inspected every part of it and had gone home determined to do better. The result was the sale of the Atlanta for commercial mining and the construction of the Unicorn. Scarcely bigger than one of Atlanta’s shuttles, he knew that she was a speedboat when compared to the lumbering hulk below her.
The image that he was seeing was not real. The thick cloud cover that seemed to be a permanent feature of this planet prevented that but the data from the wide array of sensors was so cleverly combined by the display unit that it was almost impossible to tell.
He could see the extent of the mine and a very obvious scar from an explosion between it and Atlanta. He wondered what had exploded and whether it had been an accident. He was also puzzled by lines of huts in a compound to one side of the mine. His sensors showed large numbers of people in them. His last message from his friend Captain Turner had been tense with hints of more to say that could not go on the data bullet and be seen by t
he company.
The reports he had seen, privately from the captain and confirmed by the company documents, had said that there were people already on the planet but little else except for vague hints about their use of magnetic fields.
‘Shall we move on to have a look at the rest of it sir?’ The first officer always seemed to be implying that they were on a vast battleship with thousands of men under their command rather than just 20 in this tiny ship.
‘Yes, move on right away.’ He replied instantly without a second thought. His ship was capable of real exploration through hyperspace to other universes, but the politicians had said that he had to sort this planet out before he could go. He had been there for half an hour and was already impatient to get back and prepare for some real work.
The rest of the planet revealed little: a second magnetic anomaly that appeared useless for landing ships because it had a mountain in the middle and some quite large towers that looked old. The sensors showed few people far from Atlanta except for a village near the mountain.
His instructions from his superiors were simple: find out what is going on and make sure that it won’t affect us either directly or by upsetting the voters and then proceed with the main mission of exploration. This was already proving more difficult than he had expected because there appeared to be no radio signals at all coming from the planet and when he had called there had been no reply. The two communication satellites appeared to be dead and they were an obvious place to start his investigation. Within a few minutes they were loading one of them into the cargo bay.
From the outside the satellite looked undamaged. Working in full protective clothing the Chief Engineer removed a panel in the outer casing to expose the circuit boards. Seeing no sign of a fault he carefully removed the first board and installed it in his circuit tester. He looked up at the captain without speaking.
‘Any ideas.’ The admiral asked, growing slightly impatient.
The Engineer looked down at his tester again and then finally spoke.
‘This board has been totally destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse.’
He didn’t need to say any more. They all knew that the only source of a pulse strong enough to destroy a satellite was a nuclear explosion.
The admiral ordered a detailed radiation scan of the entire planet. Several hours later they had found nothing, and he knew that he was wasting time.
The Unicorn entered the atmosphere at speed and glowed red briefly before deploying long swept wings and gliding towards the source. Stopping over an area where the trees had been cut to low stumps it hovered briefly before landing. The entire process took less than five minutes and it took some time for a ragged convoy of Jeeps to arrive from the Atlanta. By the time they arrived the hatch of the Unicorn was open and a ramp that had folded out and reached down to the ground.
Scanning the welcoming party, he saw no sign of his friend Captain Turner or anybody else in anything resembling the uniform of a ship’s crew. A large crowd was gathering, all dressed in working clothes except for a single over-weight man near the centre who was wearing an utterly incongruous and rather creased business suit. He stepped through the hatch in his immaculate navy uniform and waited while the fat man staggered up the ramp. In the distance he could see the imposing bulk of the outer ring of the Atlanta looming over the landscape. He was not impressed by it; he knew that the weapons on his own ship could destroy it at any time with ease.
The director knew instinctively what to do. Having walked up the slender ramp he just stopped a few feet short of the captain and said.
‘Welcome to our planet.’
The admiral was standing to one side ready to welcome him onboard the ship, but he did not move. The captain tried saying. ‘Welcome to the Unicorn. I am admiral Sydney and I assume that you are the Mission Director from the Atlanta.’
‘Yes, I am the Director, and how can I help you?’
‘We have been sent to help you with your dealings with the people who we understand were on the planet when you arrived.’
The Director knew he was winning. ‘Thank you for your concern, but we do not require assistance. The local people are prospering. Would you like use to take you to them to see?’
The admiral made one last try. ‘Perhaps you would like to come inside to discuss arrangements. Then perhaps you could come in our ship while we visit the main sites’
It was pointless. He was told that the company had set up excellent offices which would be far better for the discussion and that there were many places to visit where it would be impossible for his ship to land however advanced it was. The admiral and three crew members were escorted to one of the Jeeps for their tour.
As the Jeeps pulled away a siren sounded on the Unicorn warning the remaining crowd to stand back. The ship took off gracefully and flew low over the Atlanta before powering back up into orbit. The Director was not in the same Jeep as the captain, so he could curse loudly without fear of being heard.
When they reached the offices, the visitors were escorted into the board room and refreshments were served. Nobody was able to tell them exactly when the planning meeting would be except that it would be ‘soon’. The admiral was growing more and more impatient when eventually a large number of people entered the room. He was relieved to see one of them in ship’s uniform but worried that he did not recognise the man. Another of the men wore a brown robe and had a large gold crucifix hanging from a chain round his neck.
The introductions started around the table. The heads of mining, process plant and personnel all seemed nervous and were clearly under instructions to say as little as possible. Next came the man with the crucifix who calmly introduced himself as the Abbot of the monastery of Saint Christopher. Admiral Sydney said nothing but could not help staring at the man in amazement. If he was typical of the local population this was certainly not a case of dealing with primitive people. Finally, it came to the man in uniform who introduced himself as the Acting Captain.
‘I had hoped to see Captain Turner. He is an old friend.’ Admiral Sydney’s remark was intended to be light conversation to start the meeting, but it was met with an icy reply from the Director who informed him that Mr Turner had deserted his ship and was no longer a captain. While all eyes were on the visitors the Acting Captain briefly shook his head.
The Director came directly to business. ‘I offered to take you to see the local people. One of them is here as you can see, and you can also see that he does not require your assistance. How many more do you wish to see?’
The admiral had a prepared speech and he thought that this was the best time to use it. ‘Your reports of contact with other people caused great interest on earth and considerable concern about their welfare. I have been instructed to delay my other duties to investigate the matter fully and to rectify any problems so that they can be reassured.’
‘And what are these pressing other duties?’ the director asked with a tone of blatant sarcasm.
‘The Unicorn is capable of deep hyperspace transits. It can be navigated to other portals and I shall be investigating what lies beyond them.’ This information was intended to impress, and it achieved it, even with the director, but not for long. He moved on.
‘So, you intend to inspect us and tell us what to do?’
‘Yes.’ The admiral replied simply. ‘And I would like to start right away.’
‘And what if we disagree about what should be done?’
‘We have brought clear guidelines that have been agreed by our governments so there should be no disagreements.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ The director stood up abruptly causing his chair to slam to the floor behind him. ‘You come here in your little ship with your rules from earth and try to tell us, the people who have studied this planet for over a year, how to run it. We run it how it should be run, and you should go back to earth and tell them. ‘Or,’ he added after a pause long enough to be menacing, ‘perhaps your ship should return without you.’
>
The admiral had had enough. ‘The President would consider it an acceptable outcome if your mission was eliminated entirely and the local population was left without further disturbance until more appropriate contact can be arranged.’
The Director was not impressed. He walked towards the door saying that he had more important business to attend to. When the officers of the Atlanta did not show signs of following him he added. ‘Move along captain, we don’t want to waste time on this man and his ridiculous threats. We scanned these men for radios and they don’t have any, so the crew of the Unicorn don’t even know where we are, and they wouldn’t risk killing their admiral.’ As he approached the door he told the security guards not to let the visitors leave. He was disappointed to see that this appeared un-necessary as they were still sitting, apparently unconcerned, at the far end of the table.
The daylight was fading outside but, glancing out of a window, the acting captain saw a bright glow high in the sky, which cast a strange red light across the valley. At first, he mistook it for the sunset but then realised what it was.
‘The ship’s coming in again, much faster, it looks as if it’s burning up.’
The Director looked out of the window as the glow grew even brighter and turned with a satisfied smile.
‘That’s the end of that then. We regret the loss of the rest of your crew.’
He did not, however get a reply or any reaction at all. The crew members of the Unicorn simply looked back at him.
The glow grew brighter still.
‘I’m amazed it hasn’t broken up yet. but...’ he stopped mid-sentence. Although the light was now almost too strong to look at the sleek shape of the Unicorn could now be seen with its wings scarcely deployed.
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