by S. H. Jucha
“Ask the Scarlet Mandator if the Ollassa would like to travel aboard our shuttle to the mesa top,” Alex said, having received Julien’s translation, as did every Omnian.
When Julien relayed the offer, the mandators surrounding Scarlet Mandator shrank back. After a brief discussion, Scarlet Mandator announced to Julien that the other mandators had declined Julien’s offer.
“And you, Scarlet Mandator? What do you choose to do?” Julien asked.
Scarlet Mandator was torn. On the one hand, intrigued at the prospect of riding in an alien vessel, and, on the other hand, fearful at the prospect of being trapped in a vessel, which might be unprepared to supply the beneficent Light. However, the occasion was too momentous to ignore the gesture, and anxiety was curbed.
“I will travel with you,” Scarlet Mandator said.
Immediately, Z and Miranda boarded so they could occupy the rearward portion of the traveler’s central aisle. Alex, Julien, and Étienne easily followed, and Alain waited for the mandator to board.
Scarlet Mandator approached the shuttle and tipped a bloom to regard the steep steps. The bright interior calmed the Ollassa. Slowly, stalks navigated the incline. Inside the shuttle, the mandator swung a bloom right and left, first taking in the massive progenitors at the shuttle’s rear and then Julien, at the front, who beckoned the mandator forward.
Julien sent to the Omnians.
Scarlet Mandator’s bloom swung rearward, realizing the last progenitor had boarded, shut the hatch, and the ship had darkened. Regarding the seats designed to hold the aliens’ forms, the mandator realized there was no gel enclosures, which sent stalks and fronds trembling.
Alex signaled the traveler’s controller to bring the main cabin’s lights full up.
Julien linked to the controller’s telemetry and held up the holo-vid toward the mandator’s bloom.
“This is the view outside of our shuttle, Scarlet Mandator,” Julien said.
The mandator was slow to understand the progenitor’s words. But, as Julien continued to explain what was presented, the meaning penetrated. Fronds and stalks ceased their trembling. The return of the seedling ship’s bright lights had helped.
“We have lifted?” Scarlet Mandator questioned.
“Yes,” Julien replied.
The mandator’s bloom swung to examine the alien seats more closely. They weren’t gel enclosures, merely an arrangement to recline upon. Eagerly, the mandator returned to the view from Julien’s device, listening to the running commentary the progenitor offered. Quicker than Scarlet Mandator could have believed, the ship was above the mesa top and settling down on an outcrop, away from Ollassa shuttle activity.
“We will exit now,” Julien said to the mandator, turning off the holo-vid, and gesturing toward the shuttle’s rear.
Scarlet Mandator turned a bloom in time to see the hatch open without the aid of one of the aliens. Stalks carefully managed the difficult task of turning around in the aisle.
Alex sympathized with the Ollassa and kept to himself an offer to hoist the alien and reverse the mandator’s orientation.
Scarlet Mandator realized the momentous offer that had been made to him by the progenitors. An Ollassa would be the first to descend from an alien ship atop the mesa, the center of the planet’s space effort. Stalks navigated the narrow aisle, and the mandator paused in the open hatch, bloom held high, while surveying the Ollassa, who had gathered. After a few generous moments, Scarlet Mandator carefully descended the steep steps.
Miranda commented on the comm, after the mandator was on the ground.
The Omnians piled off the traveler, and Alex ordered Franz to lift.
Instead of keeping the stalks flexed, facilitating an easy stride, the mandator was walking with them fully extended, as if on stilts.
At a massive elevator housing, probably overbuilt to protect it from shuttle or fuel accidents, a number of Ollassa scuttled aside to allow the mandator and aliens unfettered access to the car. When it arrived, three taskers exited the elevator, hurrying past the Omnians, their blooms twisting behind them for second looks even after they passed.
Scarlet Mandator strode onto the elevator car and relaxed the stalks after the car doors closed. Sympathetic expressions passed between the Omnians. It appeared as if the mandator’s performance had cost the Ollassa some precious energy.
Descending to a lower level, the car stopped and the mandator led the Omnians down a wide corridor. Mandators, monitors, taskers, and other Ollassa castes squeezed aside to give the aliens a wide berth.
Scarlet Mandator signaled the progenitors to wait and entered the primary center for Mesa Control.
“Flame Executor,” the mandator announced, “on the words of the Scarlet Life Giver, the aliens are to view the records of the events surrounding the giant orb.”
Activity in the command center halted, as blooms swung the mandator’s way, but a rebuke from the executor returned them to their tasks.
“Mist Monitor, provide the mandator with access to the alternate command center and set up the records list. You’re to remain with the mandator until the aliens are satisfied with the viewing. Understood?” the executor ordered.
“Yes, Flame Executor,” Mist Monitor acknowledged and followed the mandator out of the primary command center.
“This way, Scarlet Mandator,” Mist Monitor said, hurrying to the forefront of the group and freezing when confronted by a broad, powerful alien. Stalks and fronds were close to collapsing.
Miranda stepped aside and swept an arm in the direction that the Ollassa, with the muted blue bloom, was headed. “Recognize, Ollassa, that you appear odd to us too,” Miranda said, as the monitor passed. The SADE had generated the ultrasonic wavelengths through her mouth, as Julien had done.
Briefly, Mist Monitor considered the progenitor’s words. Could the aliens find the Ollassa as intimidating or as repulsive as they did them, the monitor wondered.
Farther along the main corridor, Mist Monitor tipped a bloom toward a small glass plate set beside a pair of doors. Signaled, the doors opened. Inside, the monitor set about activating the backup command center. When up and running, Mist Monitor accessed a panel and searched the Mesa Control’s archives for the requested events. The mandator was required to unlock the carefully protected files for viewing.
The twins took up posts when they entered the command center. Étienne positioned himself in a corner where he could watch the entire room, and Alain stood slightly to the left of the twin doors’ seam, prepared to intercept anyone coming through them.
“Ready, Scarlet Mandator,” the monitor announced.
“Julien, what does your leader wish to see?” the mandator asked.
Alex sent, when he received the question.
“He requests a view of the orb in its entirety, Mandator,” Julien repeated.
The blooms of the
Ollassa tipped briefly toward each other, before the mandator asked, “Julien, you say your leader requested this of you now?”
“Yes.”
“But the formations on the head that produce words, as was seen at the site of the Life Giver, did not move,” the mandator said.
“True, Scarlet Mandator, my leader speaks to me with his mind,” Julien replied, tapping his temple.
“And you hear this and can reply to him in this manner?” the mandator asked.
“Yes, my leader is an exceptional form of fauna, but I’m much more,” Julien replied, knowing Alex and the other Omnians were linked to him.
Julien received an image from Alex of his head growing larger, like a balloon expanding, until it burst, sending miniature Juliens scampering everywhere. The image war ended abruptly, when the mandator directed Julien’s attention toward a panel.
“Can you see what is displayed here, Julien?” Scarlet Mandator asked.
Julien examined the panel, and Z got as close as his Cedric Broussard avatar would allow. The SADEs ran spectral scans on the panel’s output until Z identified the frequency spectrum. Julien tweaked the display in his kernel until the image represented something that was manageable by human sight. Then, Julien broadcast his view of the panel to the Omnians.
“This is further proof that the Ollassa orb is not the Libran sphere,” Z commented. “This one has a different ring configuration.”
Miranda was quickly assimilating the conversation and data. She possessed Z’s general knowledge but not the data trove Z had accumulated when he was aboard the city-ship, Our People. That hefty bit of data had been transferred to Haraken’s Central Exchange vault and later copied to the Freedom, the other city-ship stationed at Omnia.
“What’s the date of incursion, Julien?” Alex asked. It seemed politer and less confusing for the Ollassa if he spoke his questions.
In response to the progenitor’s request, Mist Monitor politely pointed to the file date at the corner of the imagery, but it meant nothing to the Omnians.
Z was able to link to Franz’s traveler, although the connection through the massive layers of heavy rock was weak. He culled through the telemetry data collected by the Vivian’s SADEs to obtain the orbital speeds of the home world, by which it was assumed the Ollassa would mark their annual cycle.
While the SADEs worked, Alex and Renée leaned against the wall opposite from the bank of panels and work stations.
Scarlet Mandator eyed the pair of leaders. “Stalks don’t lock?” he asked Julien.
“Fauna,” Julien replied, and the mandator tipped the bloom in understanding.
The SADEs were able to calculate the Omnian equivalent of the Ollassa annual cycle. Then, they questioned Mist Monitor and obtained today’s date.
“By our calculations, Alex, this event took place 58.65 years ago,” Julien said.
“Julien, have the monitor play any vids they have of events surrounding the orb after its incursion,” Alex requested. He never left his post against the wall, knowing it would take the SADEs more time to assimilate the disparate imagery.
Mist Monitor began by playing a collection of image sequences, most of them taken from the ships that encountered the orb, at normal speed. When Z asked if the sequences could be played at a higher rate, the monitor pointed to a small slider to the left of the panel.
Julien, who was closest to the slider, moved it up farther and farther until it reached its apex. After that, the SADEs viewed the recorded image files at twenty times the normal rate.
Mist Monitor spared a moment to regard the mandator, who replied to the Ollassa’s unasked question, with, “Aliens.”
Julien and Z collected more than two hundred imagery files. While they recorded the data, Miranda stitched the imagery into a coherent record of what had taken place.
“We’re ready, Alex,” Miranda said, when her process was complete.
“Play it,” Alex said.
Julien quickly informed the Ollassa that they would be busy, for a few moments, and he pointed to his temple. The mandator’s bloom tipped slightly in acknowledgment.
Miranda projected the stitched imagery to the Omnians. The Nua’ll sphere had moved into the Ollassa system on a tangent that would have it intercepting the home world. Nearly sixty small ships left the planet’s orbit to engage the sphere. At the same time, many more Ollassa vessels left orbits around other planets and moons, where bases were established, to join in the fight.
As the Ollassa ships neared the sphere, it rotated its upper and lower halves in opposite direction, as the Nua’ll vessel did at Libre. Two bullet-shaped ships emerged from two different ports, 180 degrees apart, located around the sphere’s midline, which the separating halves of the sphere had revealed. The Omnians knew these were the sphere’s primary defense.
The ugly truth behind Étienne’s comment became clear, as Miranda continued spooling out the compiled vid. The bullet ships began firing their beams, and the Ollassa ships were destroyed two and three at a time. Soon, the mass of defenders scattered, seeking to swarm the interlopers from all directions.
Julien knew the answer to Alex’s question, but he considered that it was best that Scarlet Mandator becomes aware that the Omnians knew of the Ollassa’s sacrifice.
“At the time of the great orb’s arrival, our ships had no means of repelling invaders,” the mandator replied. “We weren’t even aware of the possibility that there would be ships from beyond the Worlds of Light. We foolishly believed the Light was reserved only for us.”
Julien relayed the mandator’s words, and a short exhale of sympathy escaped Renée’s lips before she covered her mouth. Alex frowned and his jaw tightened, popping out the muscles along the sides.
The Omnians watched in horror, as ship after ship of the Ollassa dove at the two bullet ships, only to end up as space debris. Finally, the strategy of swarming one of the sphere’s bullet ships paid off. Two small Ollassa ships, approaching from opposite sides of the enemy ship, managed to get through the deadly beam strikes and impact the Nua’ll protector. The three vessels burst into an expanding ball of tortured metal, hot gases, and organic debris.
Afterwards, the remaining bullet ship immediately retreated toward the Nua’ll sphere. Once it was recovered, the sphere accelerated out of the system. The small Ollassa craft valiantly attempted to catch the fleeing sphere, but they quickly fell behind.
When Julien relayed the message, the Ollassa tipped their blooms deeply, and Mist Monitor wondered if perhaps, alien or not, the visitors might not be so different from the Ollassa.
“We wish to determine the path the great orb took when it left
the system,” Julien said to the mandator.
Mist Monitor accessed charts of the Ollassa system and the surrounding stars, presenting it as a view from across the ecliptic. Then the monitor added the last position of the orb before it recovered its last defender and headed out of the system. A line was added that extended from that position to the last sighting of the orb by the Ollassa. The SADEs immediately recorded that piece of valuable information.
“Do you have any more questions for the mandator, Alex?” Julien asked.
Alex ruminated on the information they’d received. It appeared he had everything the SADEs and he needed. Alex’s impression of the Ollassa was that they were an insular species. They would focus on developing their system’s resources, but Alex thought they would never travel beyond the limit of their precious Light. As such, the Ollassa would probably never become Omnian allies in the fight against the Nua’ll.
Alex sent in reply.
“Scarlet Mandator, we have gathered the information on our enemy that we required. Before we leave, we have an offer for you,” Julien said.
“Any offer must be received by a group of, at a minimum, five mandators, and four of the five must approve. I will arrange it,” Scarlet Mandator replied and hurried from the backup center.
Mist Monitor stepped away from the panels. Required to stay, the Ollassa was unsure of whether to engage the aliens in conversation.
“Mist Monitor, Renée de Guirnon, one of our leaders, requests a favor of you,” Julien said. “She would like to approach you and touch the petals of your bloom. Is this allowed?”
The monitor glanced at the small alien. Of any of the progenitors, it seemed safest to interact with this one. Curiosity drove the monitor’s thoughts. The Life Givers created all Ollassa, who lived until stalks and fronds failed. Ollassa lives were highly communal. However, in many respects, their lives differed greatly from animals, who produced and nurtured young. Thus, Ollassa lives were characterized by an element of isolation.