The Queen's Daemon (T'aafhal Legacy Book 2)

by Doug L. Hoffman

  Mendez's eyes grew even wider, showing white all the way around his pupils. Ahnah notice a new odor and smiled to herself.

  The she-bear snorted once, left the man fall to the deck, and left as silently as she had appeared. Raoul huddled on the deck and shook in his now soiled jumpsuit—he had shit himself.

  Chapter 6

  Science Section, 2nd Deck, Peggy Sue

  Kate was busy disassembling the control and monitoring equipment used during the ice drilling operation, removing sub-assemblies and returning them to the lab's storage lockers. It would have been quicker to have the ship's fabrication units spit out the needed components from scratch and then scrap them but the Chief Engineer was an old fashioned type—waste not want not, he had said.

  Still, it gave her something to do. A not quite mindless task that required little heavy thinking. Better this than running endless equipment checks on equipment wedged in hard to access parts of the ship. The Chief did his best to keep all members of the crew busy doing such tasks—maintenance and testing, emergency drills and weapons practice. He truly believed that idle hands were the devil's workshop.

  Back on Earth, before the alien attack that killed most of the human race, Katrin was an undergraduate student in industrial engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Located in North Rhine-Westphalia, a region with many institutions of higher learning, UDE was one of the ten largest universities in Germany. The pace and competition was strenuous so she had taken a year's sabbatical from studying to join an oceanographic expedition to the Antarctic. That decision had most likely saved her life when the asteroids began to fall.

  Now, years later, she found herself working a similar job aboard a space ship. The biggest difference was not being cold all the time, though the drilling operation had brought flashbacks of taking core samples under freezing conditions—bundled up in a heavy parka instead of a spacesuit. Her memories put her in a melancholy mood. The thing she missed the most was friends and the ready companionship of the opposite sex.

  In the time the Peggy Sue had been in space, Kate had pretty much run through all the acceptable partners among the crew. The enlisted ranks were mostly uninspired intellectually, from her point of view. She was into classical music, opera, and European philosophy—the crew were into less cerebral fare. And while the officers were more educated, they were pretty much spoken for.

  Still, a girl had needs, so she had settled on a relationship with Frank Hoenig, one of the shuttle pilots. Frank had been a crewmember on the ESS Fortune, the Colonization Board transport that had been destroyed at Gliese 667C. Only four of the crew and four of the colonists were saved from that debacle, miraculously without loss among the Peggy Sue's compliment. Thoughts of the danger they barely escaped made her shiver.

  “How are you coming, Katrin?” asked Gerard Leclerc, a chemist on the science staff, his sudden appearance startling the young engineer.

  “Gut, Herr Doktor,” she replied, rattled enough to revert to her native German. “It will take several more hours to finish disassembling this equipment.”

  “No problem, we have almost two weeks in alter-space to look forward to so there is no rush. I'm knocking off for the day, guten tag.” The Belgian scientist smiled a friendly smile and exited the compartment.

  I should probably quit for the day myself, she thought, no sense hurrying. I could go see what Frank is doing. We could have a couple of beers in the crew lounge and then see what happens.

  Fakkaa Fleet, Alpha Phoenicis Prime

  Grand Fleet Admiral Raqqee floated above the command deck, the long heavy claws of both digging paws clutching the backs of the admiral’s observation chair. The people of Fakkaa—the cold, nearly barren super-Earth hanging in space off the flagship's port bow—were finally moving in force against the natives of the system's other habitable planet. That planet was a much smaller, much hotter world that orbited Alpha Phoenicis's small, ruddy companion star. There were already agents provocateur in place on that festering swamp of a world, but this was different. This was a real invasion force.

  Four digging paws of warships, over ten years in construction, formed a constellation above the Fakkaa home world. On board were 432 specially trained soldiers, prepared to lay down their lives in service of the people. If the Wise Ones were correct, the very survival of the Fakkaa might well depend on their mission to the world circling the lesser sun.

  More than ten years ago, the Wise Ones' ship appeared above the world, bringing a message of warning from the wider galaxy. They told the awestruck Fakkaa that their sun was soon to end its current stable helium burning phase and balloon into a red giant. The star's girth would expand to encompass the Fakkaa home world’s orbit, ending all life on the planet. To back up their warning, the mysterious aliens had provided reams of data and astrophysical theory, information that advanced Fakkaa science by decades. In the end the native scientists were forced to agree, their world was doomed.

  Once the Fakkaa had accepted their fate, the aliens, who called themselves only the Wise Ones, offered a way out, a path to survival. The Wise Ones claimed that there was an ancient device buried somewhere on the rocky planet orbiting the sun's red dwarf companion star. This device, they claimed, could protect the red sun's planet from the eventual explosion when the primary star ejected its mantle and became a white dwarf. This information had several implications.

  First, because the other planet was inhabited, the fastest approach to recovering the artifact would be to invade that planet and enslave them. The natives would then be used as conscript labor to unearth the alien device. This would greatly reduce the number of Fakkaa needed in the initial phase of the greater plan.

  Second, to invade their neighboring world the Fakkaa would need to build a space fleet—something they lacked the technology to do. Again the Wise Ones stepped into the gap, providing their newly acquired henchmen with just enough technical know-how to construct a space fleet. The result was the twelve ship fleet currently orbiting the home world.

  Third and most critical, that fleet needed to proceed to the other planet, conquer its primitive natives, and find the device. Otherwise preparing a larger fleet to evacuate more Fakkaa would serve no purpose. This was Admiral Raqqee's mission and the enormity of it was resting heavily upon him. He called out to the captain of his flagship.

  “Captain Tikkoo, do we have an expected flight time to the companion star?”

  “Yes, Admiral. Given best estimated continuous acceleration using the impulse drives we should arrive in thirty-six days.”

  The Admiral nodded. The miraculous new engines that drove the ships of the fleet were like none ever imagined by Fakkaa scientists. A gift from the Wise Ones, the engines required no propellant and produced no exhaust. Supposedly, they converted microwave energy directly into thrust inside a sealed chamber—something deemed impossible by Fakkaa's best scientists.

  Totally silent and highly efficient, they required only electricity, which was amply provided by compact fusion reactors—another technology far beyond the most advanced science and engineering available to the locals. They were magical devices, impossible devices, and yet they worked. The combination of impulse engines and fusion power meant they could reach the daemon star in little over a month; a voyage that would have taken years with Fakkaa's native technology, if it could have been done at all.

  “The reactors are marvelous, but the drives are pure magic,” Tikkoo commented, as though he heard the Admiral's thoughts.

  Tikkoo had been Raqqee's friend since their academy days; but for luck their positions could be reversed, Tikkoo the fleet admiral and Raqqee his captain. There were times that the Admiral wished that was the path fate has chosen for them. Indeed, this was one of those times—Raqqee had to talk with the Wise Ones, to tell them all was in readiness for the armada to sail.

  Nothing for it, he thought to himself, smoothing his quills with the digging claws on his powerful forearms. We may be saving our people by these actions,
but I can't help feeling we've made a deal with the Devil himself.

  Bridge, Dark Lord's Ship

  The Commander pulsed slowly, rhythmically, not showing the disgust it felt having to talk with one of the warm life scum it had enlisted for this mission. The vile vertebrate positively glowed with heat, its very presence would have been a deadly menace if they were ever in physical contact. But the native Admiral was safely aboard his primitive flagship, and the Commander ensconced in the cold, liquid filled control center of its starship.

  As part of the deception, the Admiral saw an image of a slender, furry creature—a vertebrate much like himself—not the potentially frightening sight of a massive, throbbing, tentacled medusoid. The computer generated image and voice were crafted to put the natives at ease, to minimize any anxiety the vermin might experience in the presence of a much more advanced and radically different alien species.

  “So tell me, Admiral. How go your preparations?”

  “All is in readiness for the Armada to sail, Wise One. We only lack your blessing for departure.”

  “Good, good! You have done well to prepare your fleet in such a short time.” It had taken a decade of effort at a breakneck pace to construct the Armada and train the sailors and soldiers that filled its ships. This was a long time to the Fakkaa but only an instant to the cold life denizens of the black ship who mentored them. “Please extend my congratulations to all those who labored to make this fleet a reality.”

  “Thank you, Wise One, your praise will be most appreciated by the Fakkaa who constructed the fleet and those who sail in it. I shall signal my Captains to get underway for the daemon star.”

  “Excellent, Admiral. I will shadow you fleet at a distance, but within communication range if you encounter any problems. Otherwise, the next time we shall converse will be in orbit around the target planet. A good voyage to you.”

  “And to you, Wise One.”

  With that the connection was broken. A dozen warships began accelerating at the slow, constant rate that would take them to the world they intended to invade.

  Bridge, Peggy Sue

  All stations on the bridge were manned and the ship rigged for departure. Billy Ray sat in the captain's chair and surveyed the scene before him. Outside of the Peggy Sue's transparent bow the ice moon lay in all its white savagery, its kilometers thick ice constantly shifting, constantly grinding and buckling. This was a world none of the Earthlings would miss.

  “Mr. Baldursson, are the engines ready?”

  “Ja, Captain. The primary reactor is at full power.”

  “Sailing Master, is the ship ready to sail?”

  “Aye, Captain. That she is,” replied Bobby, the officers enjoying the opportunity to act out their traditional roles.

  “Very Good. Mr. Lewis, lift the ship and get underway.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” the Lieutenant answered from the helm.

  There was only the slightest of tremors before the deck gravity came on, damping all sense of acceleration. Around the ship, snow that had fallen since they landed over a week ago streamed out in rivulets under the press of repulsors. The six large landing legs the ship had been resting on broke free of the icy surface and retracted flush with the bottom of the hull. The moon's surface dropped away and the Peggy Sue was once again a spaceship.

  “Sir, the ship is underway and answering the helm smartly,” reported Lt. Lewis.

  “Very good, helmsman. Sailing Master, lay in a course for the next alter-space transit point. Ahead three quarters—let's burn some of that new deuterium we spent that past week harvesting.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. ETA for transit point is three hours and forty-seven minutes.”

  “Navigation, what is the projected transit time to our next destination?”

  “Alter-space transit time to Alpha Phoenicis is thirteen days, five hours and fourteen minutes, Captain,” reported Mizuki from the navigation console.

  “Very good, Dr. Ogawa. All hands will remain at their action stations until we transit.”

  “Roger that, Sir,” acknowledged the First Officer as she passed the word to all stations. The general mood among the crew was a happy one, the Peggy Sue was finally headed back toward Earth with only a few stops to make on the way.

  Chapter 7

  Peggy Sue, Alter-space

  Traveling through alter-space was boring. Nothing to see outside the ship, at least nothing that human eyes could make sense of. At best you could lose your mind to the “million light-year stare” that some experienced gazing into the nothingness. To prevent that, the viewing ports of the ship were all turned an impenetrable gray for the duration of the transit.

  To keep the crew from boredom induced mischief the officers and Chief Zackly quickly found work for anyone idle. Simulated weapons practice and calls to General Quarters were frequent, but too much time at action stations tended to blunt crew performance, not enhance it. So equipment was checked and rechecked, space suits and armor were inspected and cleaned, and physical training in the cargo hold was encouraged for all hands. Regardless, shipboard life soon settled into tedium.

  For Shadi and Dorri the monotony encompassed their normal school work. Dorri in particular, despite her love of all things scientific, actually asked the Chief for something different to break up her daily ritual. Grudgingly, the grizzled old sailor assigned the teenager to help out in the hydroponics gardens. She was passing through the second deck, climbing up the companionway to third when she was spotted by Raoul Mendez. Glancing around and seeing no one else, he quietly followed her up the ladder.

  * * * * *

  Stepping through the door to the aft hydroponics chamber, Dorri paused and called Alexis Garner, the tech in charge of the ship's gardens.

  “Alexis, this is Dorri. The Chief sent me to help you... so where are you?”

  “Hey Dorri! Glad for the help. I'm all the way aft re-potting some herbs. Grab something to dig with from the equipment bin and come on back.”

  “OK, see you in a minute.”

  Dorri opened the sliding door on the equipment locker and selected a shiny metal hand spade with a fat rubber grip. Closing the locker she headed aft, tool in hand.

  Mendez, hearing the girl moving away, waited a couple of heart beats and then entered the chamber himself. Between lush green plants a grated pathway led aft. Overhead, light panels glared brightly, bathing the growing plants with light skewed toward the ultraviolet. Water sprays hissed, filling the air with moisture. Earthy smells assaulted his nose.

  The hydroponics section was not all hydroponic. Many plants do not do well in a pure hydroponic setting so these were given individual pots, filled with soil. They were drip fed water laced with nutrients appropriate to their needs. In the largest pots were dwarf fruit trees—apples, oranges, lemons, limes, and others. Depending on the crop, the distance between pots was automatically increased as the plants grew. Starting out close together when newly planted and spread out when ready to harvest, they formed a continuum of growth.

  The marvel of growing plants in a spaceship far from Earth was lost on Raoul. He had no more regard for the plants than he had for the young woman he stalked. Silently closing the distance to his target he lunged.

  “Got you, you little cunt!” he snarled, grabbing Dorri around the waste with his right arm, savagely grasping her left breast with his other hand.

  Dorri screamed.

  “Scream bitch! You're going to scream until you can't scream anymore!” His head was pressed against hers as he shouted in her ear.

  Dorri bent forward and then threw her head back, into her attacker's face. Cartilage and bone crunched as the back of her head flattened Mendez's nose.

  “Ahhh!” he cried, loosening his grip.

  Dorri realized she still held the spade in her right hand. Reversing her grip so the blade pointed downward, Dorri struck behind her, driving the tool into the man's upper leg. Mendez howled in pain, losing his grip on the struggling girl. Dorri escaped and ra
n down the row.

  Mendez pulled the spade from his leg and blood began to soak his jumpsuit. Staring dumfounded at the makeshift weapon in his hand, rage swept over him. Raising the hand spade over his head he shrieked and moved to give chase.

  The deck dropped away from his feet as a woman's voice behind him spat, “Not today, motherfucker!”

  * * * * *

  Raoul's paying unwanted attention to Dorri and her sister had not gone unnoticed by the ship's NCOs and officers. The First Officer, fearing trouble from the malcontent, ordered the ship's computer to keep track of Mendez. Peggy Sue was instructed to notify the nearest officer or senior crewmember if he approached one of the girls alone. As a result, Raoul's furtive pursuit of Dorri up the companionway triggered an alert, summoning the nearest officer to follow. That officer was Betty White.

  The ship's doctor immediately left the Sick Bay on 2nd deck and hurried up the nearby companionway. She caught sight of Raoul just as he vanished through the hydroponics section door. Hearing Dorri's subsequent scream Betty broke into a run.

  Racing between the rows of plants, Betty saw Raoul's head snap back, then she heard his bellow of pain as Dorri escape his grasp. As he pulled the hand spade from his wounded leg and moved to pursue the fleeing girl, Betty was on him. Grasping the man by the collar and the seat of his jumpsuit, Betty swore: “Not today, motherfucker!”

  With strength born of instinct and anger, she jerked the man from the deck and threw him bodily into the overhead with such force several light panels shattered. Allowing her momentum to carry her beneath and beyond the man, Betty pivoted, repositioning her self to face Mendez if he resumed his attack. This was unnecessary.

  Raoul's body fell to the deck. The tool he had in his hand came loose when he collided with the overhead and preceded him to the floor. The spade bounced and, through a conspiracy between physics and the grated deck, stood on end just as he landed on it. The blade pierced his back between two ribs, puncturing his heart.