Chambers stood for a moment with his mouth open and looked confused at Kokrint.
»Very poisonous spines! Growing very quickly when danger looms. Bitewarps hate them,« declared Kokrint and rustled with his spines.
With a rumbling noise, Pillgreen collapsed and fell hard on the floor. Chambers jumped over to him and examined the man carefully. A deep gaping hole covered Pillgreen’s chest. When the chef felt the pulse at the neck of the man, the skin felt cold.
»I’d cautiously say, Pillgreen’s dead!«
Kokrint shook off the dead creature and let out a series of disgusted noises. His skin had turned to gray and appeared through the black spines.
»How did these parasites come aboard! Don’t you have any health regulations?«
At the same moment, the ship alarm sounded, and Fosset’s solemn voice could be heard over the intercom.
»Danger! Intruders on board! These attackers are Frigonans, survivors of the Circle battleship Blosphor. Intelligent and aggressive beings who want to take over our ship. Red alert! Chambers! Utmost caution! I’ll send reinforcements!«
Chambers looked around and whispered to Kokrint, »So far we’ve quite well coped without help, don’t you think?«
»Maybe we should fight the Frigonans with their own weapons,« said Kokrint with a quavering voice.
»What do you suggest?« Chambers asked interestedly.
»We re-program the air-condition and turn up the heat in the ship,« Kokrint explained his plan. »It seems that the Frigonans don’t tolerate heat and perhaps leave our ship voluntarily.«
Chambers squinted.
»You’re a genius, Kokrint!«
Once again, the cook turned around and looked suspiciously into the corridor outside the mechanical room.
»Watch out! Sparks must be around here somewhere. I’m afraid he was also attacked by these Frigos,« he advised.
»Shouldn’t we rather wait for reinforcements?« Kokrint asked mutely.
»We’ll take care of this alone – here and now!« Chambers hissed angrily. »These damn beasts tried to attack me twice already. I’ll show them what it means to mess with the chef!«
The message
»Frigonans,« Welf Rouven stretched the words with a pale face and pulled his thermal jacket tighter. »How could these beings survive that long in space and how many of them do we have to deal with?«
Fosset just shrugged his shoulders, gave Chambers a short warning message and thought depressed, Dorothea has passed on all details to the crew while I was still talking to the Frigonan. Hopefully, we are prepared, and the crew remains alert. The attackers are outnumbered, nevertheless, very dangerous.
»We just got a little taste of what awaits us if we actually left the Solar System one day,« said Gamze Acun, rubbing her clammy hands. She threw Fosset a quick glance, then added with a firm voice, »We have initiated the invasion alarm. The crew has been informed. All sections are sealed off, and weapons were issued. The crew has been ordered to assemble in the mess hall. No one is permitted to walk alone throughout the ship. We’re just putting together a security team to defend the strategically important sections of the ship. Unused sectors, hangars, maintenance shafts and tunnel were evacuated and flooded with knockout gas. However, we don’t know is if these beasts are immune to the gas or not.«
»All right,« Fosset agreed. »Send a few people to the sickbay to pick up Dorothea.«
I have to try to understand Toiber Arkroid’s train of thoughts, pondered Fosset. I don’t think that he actually wanted to expose us to the Frigonans directly or subject the crew to this threat. The Circle People survivors are rather the anticipated contact, which should provide us with new information. But what exactly is the message then?
»We have all heard the discussion log,« Gamze Acun began, as suddenly the command central was filled with an intense humming noise. »What’s this? Did somebody just start up an aggregate?«
»Confirmed!« Welf Rouven commented relieved. »Somebody has just reversed the operation of the life support systems.«
Seconds later, warm air flowed from the air diffusers into the command central. The crew seemed pleased, judging by the calls of the men and women present. Seconds later, a small holo next to Fosset established, showing Chambers’ grinning face. »We killed two Frigonans and are now in the engine room. Kokrint has just re-booted the life support systems, and the temperature should now gradually increase. If you agree, we want to heat up the Frigos and drive the temperature to over 35 degrees Celsius. I also suggest opening the doors to the walk-in cooler in the galley to allow them to move there. Kokrint suspects that these creatures can’t tolerate high temperatures and die. Maybe we can lure the invaders into a trap.«
»An excellent idea,« applauded Fosset and signaled Welf Rouven to take all appropriate measures.
»Unfortunately, there’re also some sad news,« Chambers said. »Pillgreen is dead. The Frigos did that.«
»What do you call them, Frigos?« Welf asked amused.
»Frigos, Frigs whatever. It’s shorter than Frigonans,« Chambers replied with a chuckle.
Fosset’s face was rigid. He pondered for a moment and said, »I want Dorothea to flash-freeze the body of the dead Montas Bondifar immediately and bring it to the walk-in cooler, regardless whether the Frigonan leader, inside Bondifar’s skull, likes it or not. Maybe that attracts the other too, and we can lock them up.«
»So far, we haven’t found Sparks yet,« Chambers warned. »Either he hides in the machine room or moved to another section. If he doesn’t show up in the mess hall, then we have to assume that he was taken over by these Frigs.«
Fosset seemed to ponder after the holo had collapsed.
»To get back to the recording,« Gamze Acun tried to catch Fosset’s attention. »If another power has destroyed the four Circle battleships, then it must be an unyielding opponent. The Frigonan Zugol spoke of a Demon from the Continuum, who we have called, supposedly. The only power, however, that could offer a threat to the Circle battleships are and were the Techno-Clerics. I don’t know of any other ally who might be able to face the mighty Circle battleships alone.«
»Who said that it was an ally?« Welf asked. »Perhaps, the Circle Generals had a dispute with another opponent. They fought and lost!«
Fosset rubbed his chin.
»But why don’t we know more about these people? Why did these aliens not get in touch with us again, and why is Zugol mentioning a demon?«
»Maybe these are precisely the questions which your unknown informant wants to draw our attention to,« Rouven replied slightly sarcastically and thus hit the point.
Fosset straightened up.
»Welf, we head for the space sector, where, according to our calculations, the Circle battleships were destroyed. Then we set our course to Orion’s central star. Make sure that our sensors and scanners are set to maximum sensitivity.«
»Roger, Commander,« Welf Rouven acknowledged. »Our journey to the Orion Sector may take us a thousand years, though.«
»We won’t fly to Orion,« Fosset rebutted and grinned at Welf. »Not just yet.«
Fosset blinked at Gamze.
»Our destination is somewhere inside the Oort Cloud. Keep a keen eye on the scanners, while we’re catching us some Frigonans or as Chambers called them … Frigos.«
The shmork pool
»The life support systems are working reliably again,« said Kokrint and, after briefly snapping his three-part tongue, put away the holographic terminal. »It’ll be hot!«
»Excellent,« Chambers commented with flushed cheeks while peering into the machine room. »As soon as the climate control system is working again, as usual, we’ll take a closer look around in this section. I want to know where Sparks is hiding. If he was also taken over by the Frigs, then they feel compelled to sabotage our systems again after the first failed attempt.
»They won’t dare. Otherwise, the chef comes on the plan again,« declared Kokrint and twisted his full mouth int
o a grimace. He craned strange suddenly, and his sharp spines rustled.
Chambers wondered, »Wait, Kokrint? Did you just make a joke? Make sure that you don’t adopt too many Human traits.«
A sound, as if a box with nails had been emptied, made Chambers hold his breath, then his jaw dropped.
Kokrint trembled violently and crooked his body as if he felt an uncontrollable urge to scratch his itchy back. His frog eyes extended far from the sockets, as hardened, thorn-like fur hair tufts fell off his body, landing on the floor. Kokrint signaled with his now smooth and green colored skin that everything was fine.
Speechless, Chambers looked at the thirty centimeters long spikes that were scattered over the floor. His eyes slowly wandered upward, then the two different beings crossed their glances.
»Your outfit!« stammered Chambers. »The nice suit is riddled with holes. It’s ruined!«
Kokrint checked himself out, looking somewhat awkward, almost bashful.
»I’ve exchanged the suit for twenty zerblings. I gave only the rarest gems for this rare piece of clothing. That was the price, the trader wanted for it. It was supposed to be made of wyrm skin. The cells of the cloth-like skin are known to still actively divide for decades after skinning the wyrm and are supposed to always repair structural defects.«
Kokrint looked down at himself, frustrated.
»And? What else?« Chambers asked.
»Nothing else! The holes are still there! They won’t close by themselves! This must be a fake or a really old suit,« Kokrint gurgled depressed.
»Cosmic fakes,« nodded Chambers. »Believe me, we know such things on Earth only too well. You should be more careful and not blindly trust any dealer.«
Chambers opened his eyes wide. Kokrint’s body seemed suddenly to get out of shape. His torso ballooned like a pufferfish while his limbs shrank at the same time. Chambers could not believe his eyes.
»Good Lord! Stop this nonsense immediately!« Chambers cried out in horror and heard his own voice in a tone that seemed completely alien and distorted to him. When he looked down at his hands, his fingers grew suddenly in length, became thinner and then formed the shape of a corkscrew. Chambers believed that his eyes could see before and behind him. He became confused and nauseated. He wanted to close his eyes. It felt like an eternity to him. He had no other choice than to watch Kokrint’s abstrusely twisted body glow like a neon advertisement. On-off and changing colors every couple of seconds.
»What … what’s … going … on … with … us?« Chambers said laboriously, but couldn’t understand Kokrint’s minute-long answer.
Then, after a convulsive response of all his muscles in his body, Chambers received a blow in the stomach – at least it felt like it. Chamber’s groan sounded like the foghorn of an ancient oil tanker, then the abstrusely distorted space-time went back to its normal state, and the surroundings took familiar shapes again.
Chambers felt as if being seasick and went on his knees. Kokrint, however, remained stiff while his skin shone with a bright pink color. Then he slowly bowed forward toward his center of gravity and fell like a board on the ground where he hit hard and laid still for a moment.
»Holy scallops!« groaned Chambers and worriedly attended Kokrint, who had landed in the pile of his ejected spines. »What in the world was that?«
Kokrint rolled clumsily onto his back and pulled a long stinger from his left leg. He seemed injured after his fall. A few drops of a violet liquid oozed from the wounded leg.
Chambers held his hand to his mouth, because the noise Kokrint made while removing the stinger, reminded him of cutting into a cooked turkey.
»You said these spines are extremely toxic,« Chambers asked disgusted and got up slowly.
»For you, yes, but not for me,« replied Kokrint with a trembling voice. Then he looked around and remarked, »I didn’t know that there’s a space-time anomaly in your Solar System! Typically, such shmork pools are listed in the charts, and there’s only one reason to fly into them. Namely, if you have Zerbite ship lice on board and want to exterminate this brood!«
»Are they dangerous?« Chambers wanted to know.
»They’re as big as your domestic cats,« Kokrint explained and shuddered in disgust. »Really pesky beasts.«
»The more you tell me about Zerbit, the more I come to the conclusion, not to visit your world. Perhaps, this space-time event also took care of the Frigs,« Chambers interjected jokingly and stopped chuckling when a short beep of the intercom signaled the beginning of an announcement.
Fosset’s voice sounded over the intercom for everyone to hear, »Please, remain calm. We currently have a few problems, but the situation is under control. Our ship has advanced into an unknown and elusive space zone which hadn’t been detected by our sensors before it hit us.«
»A shmork pool,« Kokrint added softly while he was hastily interrupted by Chambers.
»Shh, please, listen!«
»We’re currently exploring this anomaly, which is located here in the outskirts of our Solar System. I want to assure you, our science department is already analyzing the data and has an excellent picture of the situation. Please, trust us.«
»Well, everything is fine then!« Chambers mocked and winked at Kokrint. »Risk detected danger averted!«
Undefined space
»I have no idea where we are!« Gamze Acun exclaimed angrily. »How dare you to tell the crew such tales? You ordered our navigator to take this course! How about if you enlighten us. What does this changed environment mean?«
She looks incredibly attractive when she’s angry, thought Fosset.
»We need to get the situation under control, then eliminate the Frigonan danger and prevent unrest among the crew,« Fosset explained. »I was just trying to avert a panic. Everyone on board noticed the entry into this undefined space. People are afraid!«
»Certainly!« confirmed Rouven. »Same here. What advice did your mysterious informant give in this respect? What did your magic memory cube tell you, Commander?«
Fosset just shook his head slightly.
A strange space-time bubble, filled with a glowing blue gas, apparently with no horizon, no stars, not even our sun can be seen, no navigation aids. We are disoriented, thought Fosset tensely.
»I can’t believe it,« growled Rouven. »How can such a thing exist in the outer sectors of the Solar System, and we know nothing about it? My scanners and sensors are useless; the navigation computer is failing us miserably. Our outside cameras only show the blue glow, nothing else.«
»The Oort Cloud is an incredibly large space sector. Even bigger than the actual Solar System,« Gamze Acun added thoughtfully and looked at Fosset with narrowed eyes. »The chance to fly into such an anomaly is one in a million. But again, we stick our noses directly into the most possible trouble.«
»Please, think,« Fosset interrupted her friendly. »I’ve ordered to take this course according to the hints by the Frigonan. In other words, we had to run into this space sector. The encounter with the Frigonans had been predicted by my informant, so he directed us straight to this sector.«
»Why do these future seers always create such a drama?« asked Rouven mockingly. »Why didn’t he say: fly to the following coordinates x, y, z, and discover an unusual space?«
»I have no idea why Arkroid wrote his message like that,« Fosset said softly but clearly.
»Arkroid?« asked Gamze Acun surprised. »The Merinian, Toiber Arkroid?«
I need to be frank with them, Fosset thought and confirmed. »Yes, do you know him?«
»Please,« Gamze replied derisively. »The man has flown for Humanity through half the galaxy and possesses a Techno-Ferry, as everybody knows.«
»Not everybody can say that,« teased Welf Rouven. »He averted the Great Tremor. I didn’t know, however, that he can see into the future.«
»Listen, Welf,« Fosset replied emphatically. »If your strange neighbor at home one day tells such a story, then you’d probably grin and recommend
him to see a therapist, but not Arkroid! Not this man! Who knows what kinds of secrets he has encountered on his last expedition. He rescued me, years ago, from Morgotradon’s prison planet. I trust him blindly. He had written this message before he had left the Solar System for an unknown destination, and so far, all his predictions have become true. I don’t question his integrity.«
»All right, boss,« calmed Rouven. »I hope, you understand that this future seer story sounds very unusual.«
»Well, strange as the story may be, it led us here,« an energetic voice sounded from the central airlock which had opened just this moment.
»Doctor,« Fosset said aloud and relieved. »Did you transport Montas Bondifar’s body to the cooler?«
»Not before I completely froze him inside an open hangar,« she replied. »It took me some time to get over this thing in his head. The Frigonan is now caught inside a block of ice, which was once the brain of this unfortunate man. Just as it was before we fished him from space.«
»This frost treatment won’t kill the Frigonan,« Gamze Acun speculated.
Dorothea shook her head.
»I suppose he has fallen into a kind of hibernation and wakes up again when the ambient temperature levels off at a temperature of minus thirty degrees Celsius again. By the way, I had to lower Chambers’ cooler temperature accordingly.«
Dorothea looked at the bluish flickering light on the central display.
»Let’s talk about this strange incident which almost turned my stomach, a few minutes ago! Half the crew complained of nausea and strange hallucinations. If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I would’ve decided to quarantine the entire crew immediately!«
»We have entered an unknown space zone, Dorothea,« said Welf while his hands swiped across the control console. »Still no response from our scanners. The external picture is all we have for now.«
NEBULAR Collection 7 - Guardians of the Continuum: Episodes 31 - 34 Page 19