by F. E. Arliss
Daer sighed. He was right. Hugely relieved, she hugged him back. “That may be true, but I am sorry that all this happened to you and that you lost your career.”
“Well, it looks like we’ve both found another in the Alliance. Doesn’t seem like a bad trade at all, does it?” Digger asked with a grin. “I always have liked to be a bit of a renegade anyway.”
Just then their comms went off, “Daer, Digger, Voc, Alfie, please meet Princess Arc Exousia in the planning room.” Turning, they hurried towards the meeting, eager to lay eyes on Princess Arc Exousia’s love interest...or could he be an ‘interest’ if she didn’t know she was attracted to him?
General Apollo turned out to be enormously tall, immensely handsome, and arrogantly commanding. Daer could see why the Princess found him attractive. She could also see why he irked her. His commanding, larger-than-life appearance was coupled by an absolute sureness that seemed to swallow whole any external intent to oppose him.
He’d mapped out a plan to corner the Idolum leak before anyone had even been introduced. That made Daer bristle. It was as though they were just pawns in his play, not actual people. Once he’d finished with the explanation of his plan, a heavy silence broke out.
The Princess heaved an exasperated sigh, and asked sarcastically, “General Apollo, would you like to meet the team who are going to help execute this plan, or are they just superfluous?”
Daer couldn’t help herself, she sniggered. Amber eyes pinned her, as the General swiveled his head to face her. “Well?” Daer asked, glaring back at him and raising an eyebrow. “I’m Daer Null. This is Digger Cole,” she said, indicating Digger with a hand on his shoulder. “And that’s Alfie,” she indicated the ex-cabbie with a tip of her head.
Digger caught the glance she gave him and he continued, “This is Voc,” he added, lifting the tiny troll into his arms and meeting the General’s eyes.
“Ha!” Voc spat out. “Osmir general thinks he knows all, sees all.” He pointed one gnarled, peanut-like finger and barked, “Knows not all. Sees not all. Can not see in rock. Only Voc and rock god can see in rock.”
Slowly, General Apollo’s mouth curved up into a smile, then to everyone's amazement, he broke out into a belly laugh. “Thank you, tiny one, for reminding me of my weaknesses. It has been so long since anyone but Princess Arc has disagreed with me, that I have forgotten the pleasure of it,” he said, lifting one huge hand and extending a single forefinger to touch the rock-rough hand of the small troll. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Voc, Digger, Alfie, and Daer,” he added, nodding slightly to each in a stiffly formal action. “Do you agree with the plan?” he asked the troll.
“It is a good plan,” Voc said simply. “Rock has nothing to do with it,” he said shrugging, then swung down from Digger’s arms and walked out of the meeting. The entire group burst into laughter. There was nothing like a mine troll to bring everyone to their senses! It was a good plan, whether they liked how it had been delivered, or not.
Within the hour, the crew aboard the Centurion had received word that General Apollo had been forwarded samples of the Idolum algae currently being shipped from Valoren to Uzi. Valoren, General Monsav’s homeworld, was the source of the algae. Once on Uzi, General Apollo would use his mind’s resonance to search out the algae signatures and follow them. Even if the shipment was separated, which it surely would be as the mole stole part of the shipment for the studies on Mirage, he’d be able to track the algae’s bio-signature.
Daer found it hard to believe that he could do that, but said nothing. If this was how he’d gotten the information from the Evelson cruiser, it explained a lot. He had a sort-of built-in connection to the ethers and the information that floated in it. Impressive, Daer thought. Kind of scary too, come to think of it.
A small contingency of crew boarded the Lance, General Apollo’s ship, and jumped to fold-space before the hour was through. It took them only a day to reach Uzi. Daer understood from something that the Princess said that General Apollo’s ‘special’ abilities allowed him to augment energies through the fold-space drive. Creepy! The guy was like an enormous electromagnet thingy, or something.
Entering Uzi’s atmosphere, the Clyde floated free of the Centurion. General Apollo sat in Clyde’s cargo bay in a cross-legged meditative trance. Occasionally, he would murmur something to Commander Quirke’s image, and a second later Daer would feel Clyde make a slight adjustment to course. She guessed that meant they were already tracking the algae.
Princess Arc Exousia sat in the same posture, facing the General across the bay. Even as she meditated, she was gazing searchingly into the General’s face. Daer suspected she was analyzing her feelings.
It took just shy of three minutes for the General to pinpoint the one container that had been isolated from the rest. It was currently moving towards a small spaceport on the dark side of Uzi.
The Clyde, acting on that information, landed on the spaceport where Alfie had been a hover-cab driver. Slipping out to meet his contacts, it was agreed that Alfie would borrow a hover-cab from a friend and he, Daer, and Digger would follow the algae as the General relayed its movements.
It didn’t take Alfie long to get his friend’s cab and meet them at the far end of the landing zone. The Clyde sat invisible next to a massive mountain of refuse piled to one side of the platform for recycling. The smell would keep people away and, Alfie assured them, the recycle crew only worked at night. The cool air kept the stench down.
General Apollo was tracking the crate of algae and it was only a matter of minutes before their comms crackled with Princess Arc Exousia’s voice. “It’s in the fortress Alfie. Just as we expected. See if there are any new defenses. Stay safe. You and Voc will go in after dark if the access tunnel in back is still there,” she said firmly.
The next couple of hours were a revelation to Daer and Digger. Alfie showed them a huge fortress set in a narrow valley. It had a massive energy dome over the top and while an armored gate graced the front entrance, Alfie assured them that if they watched closely, they’d see the energy dome drop for an instant or two before the crate was hauled through a different door in a crevasse to one side. It was a masterful play of misdirection.
Over the next several hours the small group tracked the perimeter of the fortress marking cameras, angles, weak spots where the energy dome might be vulnerable, and timing the guard rotations. Digger, having had first hand experience breaching the energy domes on ‘the dump,’ found several weak spots where a small EM disruptor charge would create a hole at least large enough for a small man and a mine troll to enter.
In the meantime, the Clyde was repositioned to a deep ravine on the far side of the valley. Alfie and Voc would deploy from there. All they had to do then was wait. Waiting was always the worst.
When Daer, Digger, and Alfie rendezvoused with the Clyde, Princess Arc Exousia and General Apollo were sparring in the cargo hold. General Monsav and Lieutenant Kor looked on. It looked like Arc was trying to kill him. Daer thought that if Idolum could be worried, the pale faces and amber eyes of Monsav and Kor looked pretty stressed out. She and Digger exchanged glances. The air in the cargo hold was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
“I think the audience needs to clear out,” Daer said to Digger in a tone that ensured she was overheard by Alfie, and the two Idolum officers. “They’ve got to work this out between them,” she added, and walked past the group and headed for the showers. The others trailed reluctantly behind.
As night fell, the crew monitored the perimeter of the fortress’ dome for guard rotations and visitors. Digger set a small interference EM pulse and triggered it with a manual setting. That way, Voc and Alfie could slip through, and Digger could drop the dome again within seconds. He’d be there when they came back to do the same. It would make the momentary lapse in the shield appear as a blip. Hopefully, no one would come checking it out.
Voc and Alfie disappeared into the darkness as wisps of fog into a starless night. T
hen, they all waited. Daer hated waiting. No one who knew her now would ever imagine that she’d waited three years to escape her husband. She was too impatient. Perhaps that enforced wait had changed her.
Alfie and Voc rematerialized on the far side of the dome after eighty minutes. They were dragging something between them. To Digger, it looked like nothing so much as a piece of wilted sea kelp. On the comms, Daer gasped, “Holy crap, it’s a Gatekan! Get him here as fast as you can. I’ll be running a trough for it in the mess!”
Rushing to the mess, Daer shoved the hydroponic hose off the top of the processor and rapidly removed the pump. She needed the space to re-hydrate the Gatekan. If it was even possible. Please Goddess, don’t let my first Gatekan die! Daer thought. She’d held the image of meeting her first person from Gateca in her mind’s eye for hours as she sat on the bottom of that pool back on Earth. Please let this one live!
In typical efficient Digger fashion, he had the four of them back on the Clyde within two minutes. Hurrying to the mess, the entire crew converged on the tiny room to watch as Digger lowered the emaciated bit of tissue-like flesh into the hydroponic processing reservoir. Several seconds passed. Again, the damn waiting! Daer thought.
“They’d literally hung him up to dry!” Alfie burst out. “They’ve got several Gatekans chained up and they appear to be forcing them to try to farm the same type of algae. Though I’d say from his condition, it ain’t workin’,” he added grimly. “We couldn’t get close enough to talk to them. Too many guards.”
General Apollo squeezed into the mess, knelt on one knee and placed one large hand under the shriveled mass of limp skin in the liquid.
Voc, having shimmied up Digger’s leg, now clung to his side. Clearly upset by what he’d seen, Voc repeated Alfie’s message. “They brought the algae to try to replicate it. They have two more Gatekans that they’re torturing with dehydration in order to get them to cooperate. Not working,” he rumbled, absently pulling Digger’s hair in agitation. Digger gently moved the little troll down to his front and began rocking him side to side as he would a baby. Slowly, the little creature’s agitation quieted.
A few seconds after those explanations were delivered, a tremulous gasp escaped Daer as she hunched over the tank beside General Apollo. “He’s alive!” she said, astonishment lacing her voice.
“The General has the wonderful gift of being able to revive people sometimes,” Princess Arc Exousia said gently. “It’s one of his strengths.”
“Oooooh,” Daer breathed in awe. “That’s pretty cool.” Digger nodded in agreement.
Tate broke in, “Hey, can you re-materialize Dad and I? I mean, we’re here, we just got our bodies fried.”
General Apollo slowly slid his massive hand out of the hydroponic vat and turned to Tate. Thoughtfully, his gaze slid over the two partially visible members of the Quirke family. “I don’t believe so,” the General said slowly. “What might be possible, though, is to grow a clone in one of our nests that you could ‘inhabit’, or something like that.” He paused and pinned the two hovering Quirkes with his burning gaze. “Think long and hard about it. The material we have to make clones from is Idolum genetic material. Unless we have human genetic material, which would involve someone dying or donating, you would be, essentially, Idolum, should you choose to do that,” he added firmly. “It’s not something to be done lightly.”
The Gatekan, when he was more fully recovered, told them his name was Philpa. He and the two other Gatekans had been taken while swimming in an isolated area on Gateca’s surface. They’d been forced to try to propagate the algae, but since none of them had specialized knowledge of aquaculture, they had not been successful. The Evelson’s employees seemed to think that because they were an aquatic species, they should magically know how to grow seaweeds and algaes. The Gatekan rolled his large bulbous eyes and waved his long tentacle-like arms in indignation.
“I’m a builder,” he stated adamantly. “What do I know about sea gardening? Nothing is what! I tell you, those people were just mean, indecent and moronic,” he added, dunking his large rubbery head once more beneath the water. As though finished with the idiocy of other species for a bit, he sunk to the bottom of the reservoir and closed his eyes.
Suddenly, his large round eyes snapped open and he popped back to the surface in urgency. “I think they’re taking another load of algae to Gateca. They’re trying to grow it there in one of the botanic test plots. You need to stop them. They’ll just force one of our scientists to do it. They’ll never last...scientists are soft. Not like the three of us builders.”
“Please get my friends out of there,” he added, waving one palely- translucent tentacle in the general direction of the dome. With that, he once more subsided into the tank. Daer smiled down at his watery visage and said softly, “Don’t worry. We will.” The mass of rubbery Gatekan seemed to melt even further into the water in relief.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tanked
The Lance, General Apollo’s ship, with just Daer, Digger, Alfie, Voc and the Gatekan, Philpa, accompanying General Apollo, dropped out of fold-space just above the Southern Hemisphere of Gateca. General Apollo had his crew run an analysis of the planet to target the places that had the nutrients required for the algae. It was here they were most likely to end up finding the factors the Evelson Corp was trying to use to grow the algae.
Within a few minutes, General Apollo had narrowed down the areas most likely to foster Evelson’s interest and had contacted the government of Gateca to enlist their help and warn them about the threat. Philpa’s family was notified and were overjoyed at his return. His corroborating statements helped get the Gatekan government onboard with General Apollo’s plan.
It was soon evident by General Apollo’s agitation that he’d honed in on the same signature of bioengineered algae that he’d tracked on Uzi. Frenzied communications flew back and forth between the Gatekan military base nearest the newly discovered Evelson installation and the Lance.
Sitting the Lance down on a tiny landmass in the middle of an enormous stretch of sea, the group decamped from the ship to meet the small military tac-team that had been sent out from the Gatekan base. Philpa made the introductions, tentacles waving enthusiastically as he explained that the other two Gatekan prisoners had been rescued, but had remained aboard the Centurion as it had better facilities to maintain their hydration than the Lance, which simply didn’t have the space for all three of the aquatanks they’d rigged up.
As the Gatekans waded into the water to advance on the small aquaculture station that appeared to be the source of the algae signature, Digger, Daer, and Alfie piled into an inflatable Idolum hover-boat that had materialized from the belly of the Lance. General Apollo reboarded his ship and would oversee the operation.
As the hover-boat approached the coordinates they’d been given, Digger chose to hang back in case the inflatable was seen. It was a sure thing that the underwater station, though small, would have some type of surface security camera. A small dome of some type of diaplex was all that could be seen from the Lance’s sensors. It shimmered slightly in a different hue of green than the surrounding sea.
Daer quickly shed her clothes down to the nanite swimwear she’d been given when she’d passed the Gateca homeworld exam. Digger, catching hold of her arm, asked harshly, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Shaking him off, she glared at him with fire in her eyes and returned, “I’m doing what I’m trained for. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m certified for this environment. I’m guessing their sensors below sea level are calibrated for Gatekan life-signs. I’m not Gatekan. I’ve got a better chance of getting in. I’m going!”
Digger relinquished her arm, and said softly, “Be careful and good luck. See you on the flip-side.” Daer grinned at him, adjusted her fins and goggles, and slid gracefully into the water.
Daer had inserted a small breather, which she used only every few minutes to inhale a small gasp of oxygen. Appr
oaching the dome from below, she frog-crawled through the water. The lab was bigger than it looked from above. It had a small circular dome with another small appendage off the dome. This was clearly living quarters for the Gatekan workers.
The dome appeared to be the actual lab and Daer could see that it was not an aquatic environment. It had tanks for the algae along the walls, but the Gatekans she could see at work were in a breathable environment. A large pool in the center of the lab could be used for the scientists to submerge themselves when they needed to rehydrate. Two human guards stood watch at the exit to the docking area, both armed with automatic laser weapons.
Keeping her head below the level of the slimy water in the algae tanks helped obscure her from sight as she slid through the water trying to find an alternate way in. On the bottom of the habitation arm, Daer found a small tube with a mesh screen. It was made of diatitanium, a diamond impregnated titanium that would have shredded the tender tentacles of the Gatekans. Using the elbow of her suit, Daer simply knocked it inward. It was made to keep the Gatekans in, not someone else out.