by Max Jager
"Better get your "snuggies" on," warned Matt, "It's probably colder than hell out there, not to mention the wind chill." He noticed only Rekton and Ifwol carried stun rifles, while Orlak and Skart carried small hand held devices.
Even wearing his mad bomber hat and heavy winter coat, and gloves, the cold was intense. The others wore lighter clothing, but Rekton told him they were electrically heated. Slavek and Vasta came up to him asking.
"What is it we're supposed to be looking for?"
"Polar bears," he replied, "Like those big white things over there that are moving our way."
Chapter 71
Titan Stand Chapter 71
It looked like a mother and her two cubs moving along a snowy crest of a low hill. Matt studied them with his binoculars while the others stood and pointed at the three bears. Then the two cubs must have wondered what those strange things standing at the base of the hill were, as they began to slowly approach. The mother on the other hand had temporarily disappeared over the crest of the hill for a moment, but suddenly came shuffling over the crest trying to assess what it was her offspring were so interested in. Matt then called out,
"Get back here guys that's a mama bear and they get crazy if they think their cubs are in danger!" No one paid him any attention as the two cubs approached Orlak and Rekton. Then Skart pointed towards their right, Matt turned to see another adult bear shuffling along headed in their general direction. He called out a warning but nobody was moving. By now, the cubs had stopped and were sniffing the air, their mother moving to get between the "threat," and her cubs.
"Oh fuck!" thought Matt, "These idiots don't realize how dangerous these damn bears are." He then shouldered his shotgun and prepared to shoot.
Suddenly the bear moving around the right rear of their ship spotted the two cubs and took off towards them, unfortunately Orlak and Rekton were right in his path. Matt shouted out one more time causing Rekton to turn around. Rather than run, he calmly aimed his stun rifle causing a rapid flash towards the charging bear. Orlak then held the small device over his head at which point a shimmering dome suddenly appeared around he and Rekton. The bear suddenly dropped it its tracks and simply fell over. This caused the other three bears to panic, and scamper back towards the crest of the hill. It was now obvious that Orlak had activated some sort of force shield, which now disappeared. Matt was still trying to make sense of what had just happened, as everyone rushed over to the bear lying nearby. Cautiously he approached, his shotgun trained on the large furry white mound, as the others were crouching down to get a better look at the bear. He could see its chest heaving so it wasn't dead. Rekton then casually kneeled down and proceeded to pry open the animal's mouth. As Orlak Skart and Slavek poked and ran their hands over its fur.
"These creatures certainly don't appear to be dangerous," proclaimed Orlak.
"Oh yeah!" shot back Matt,
"Check out his teeth and those claws, this bear could really do a number on you. By the way, how long will he be out?"
He was about to respond when the roar of a snowmobile came to their ears. Before anyone could react, the sled came roaring up on them. Two figures, one armed with a pump shotgun jumped off and came storming up to them until Rekton, Orlak, Skart and Slavek stood up and turned their way. There was a definite female squeak as the two figures jumped back. Matt started waving his arms trying to calm the situation down.
"Who are you people? What did you do to that bear? Was coming from the woman holding the shotgun, now pointing it menacingly at Matt and his friends.
"Just calm down lady!" He exclaimed, "The bear is just stunned, the mother and her cubs just ran off."
Cautiously approaching him the women continued to focus on the aliens.
"Who are you? And who are those people?" She again exclaimed, pointing at them. Matt approached her a little more, then replied.
"That's Rekton Chibat, Orlak Klo'Ax, Skart Grexie, Ifwol Skyn, and Slavek Slykhor. My name is Matt."
"Did you kill that bear?" She then demanded, Matt shook his head,
"No it's just stunned, but for how long I don't know, probably best if we leave."
Both women began to look around,
"How did you get out here? I don't see any snowmobiles or snow cats."
Matt smiled, and pointed towards their ship which was still in cloak mode.
"You can't see it, but our spaceship is right over there, good thing you didn't try and cut across that little rise, or you would have run right into it." The women were now clearly confused.
"What are you talking about, there's nothing there."
"Oh there's a ship there all right, it's cloaked, if you look carefully, you can see a shimmering from the cloaking mechanism." She briefly looked, then focused on Matt.
"Hey wait a minute, you're that guy from Colorado, I saw your picture on the news,"
"Well good for you," he replied, then pointing behind her he said,
"Don't look now but here comes another bear." She and her friend immediately turned,
"Oh shit!" A rather large bear was now loping towards them, both women started waving their hands and shouting at the bear who showed no signs of stopping. With one fluid motion, Rekton raised his rifle and fired. Once again there was a flash, and the bear stumbled, then keeled over. Rekton then called over to Matt,
"Tell your friends there the animal isn't dead, just stunned, like the other one."
Everyone moved cautiously towards it with the two females barely taking their eyes off the aliens. With a large stunned polar bear lying at their feet, the only thing the women could think to ask was to Rekton.
"Are you really from outer space?" Although he could understand them, they had to ask Matt what his reply was.
"Rekton says he doesn't know you well enough to tell you that."
About this time the first bear that had been shot began to show signs of recovering.
"If I shoot him again," announced Rekton, "He might die, or become damaged in some way."
"Well in that case," said Matt, we'd better get out of here." Then turning to the two women, he said,
"Gotta get going ladies, that bear is waking up and he might be pissed that people poked and prodded him it might be a good idea for you guys to leave as well." With that, Matt and his friends disappeared inside the Azani. From where the women stood, it was if they had simply vanished into thin air. However the low rumble from the spacecraft's engines indicated there was something very large and threatening rising up into the sky. By now both bears were shaking off the last of their sluggishness and were starting to growl. The women just barely managed to hop on their machine and make a fast get-a-way as the bears began to chase them.
Once again orbiting earth, there was much discussion on the polar bears, as Orlak commented.
"These creatures are quite deceiving as to the danger they pose. Take for example the Hertug's on Khyne Zok," he continued.
"Very large mouths full of very sharp teeth like spikes. Claws that can extend eight kota's, now that is a monster."
"How about the Zertano's on our own home world," replied Slavek, They burrow into the soft rock and wait for unsuspecting passer-by. Then they shoot straight up and drop right on you biting and slashing?" The others nodded in agreement as Ifwol added his offering.
"How about the Minturn on Iddi Kret, they are twice the size of that bear, double quick fast, and a bite that will kill you in a matter of tic's."
"All very true," said Jezang, "But I say the Quetzal Sly on Xiceta are the most dangerous." She then looked at Matt.
"Picture if you will, a creature roughly Skart's height, they are basically a large flightless bird that is as cunning as the Diyari. They have a rudimentary language, and can reason. For some reason the only race that can even approach them is the Vylons. They all carry Ka'Toc's which are deadly sharp knives incorporated into their talons. They travel in small flocks called "nestings," and will not hesitate to attack groups of twenty or more."
From the way these monsters were described, it sounded like they were creatures straight out of hell, and when you saw them there was no question there was nothing soft and cuddly about them. The next stop was Kruger National Park, Everyone wanted to view Cape buffalo, Lions, and especially the elephants.
Later, after they had eaten, Matt ran a "double feature," on his laptop, and with a patch cord rigged up by Gyod, everyone could see it on the monitor screen. First up was "This Island Earth." The film dealt with aliens coming to earth and trying to enlist scientists to develop a weapon the aliens could use to defeat their enemy, the Zagon.
Unbeknownst to the scientists, the alien leader was only interested in settling his people on earth. Before he ran the movie, Matt did his best to explain the movie's plot, but to no avail.
"Matt," said Rekton, "That story made absolutely no sense. First of all, why were the Zagon's at war with Metaluna, and this business of directing meteor's and asteroids at the planet. One thing though, a very long time ago I believe the Neistra actually tried to control Asteroids in the same manner as the Zagon's but eventually gave up on the idea as being too costly and impractical." Then Slavek jumped in with,
"Nothing against you or your planet Matt, but the idea of asking a technically inferior race to develop advanced weaponry is absolutely ludicrous." All of them thought the flying saucer was a joke, even after Matt tried to explain movie budgets, and what people thought flying saucers might have been like at the time.
Next up was "Close Encounters" which Matt's friends found rather impressive, however they had questions.
"There is some truth to this business of conversing through musical equations, however translators work so much better," commented Orlak. "I was also interested in the size of that "mother ship. From the images we must assume it is roughly the size of a space station, which could never operate within a planets atmosphere like that, and I certainly am not aware of anyone who has built a spacecraft with those requirements."
"Well it's just a movie," replied Matt, none of that was real." Ifwol chuckled,
"With the exception of that mother ship, somebody has built similar craft."
All of them especially enjoyed the scenes where the small craft are being chased by the police, and the mysterious craft that hovers over Roy's truck causing everything to come out of the glove box.
As far as the alien beings went, no one claimed to know of any races looking like that, in fact, as Skart dryly observed,
"They don't look all that industrious to me, and that mother ship of theirs looks like there was no logic behind its construction, other than a space station, which basically orbit over a planet and those spires, I wonder what their supposed to be fore?" Matt reminded him the ship in question was a model and not real. Skart grunted,
"Had someone designed that craft that was familiar with interstellar space travel, their mother ship would have appeared much differently."
Tomorrow they would head for South Africa and Kruger to check out more dangerous beasts but for right now, it was time to get some much needed rest. As he lay in his bunk Matt heard Slavek tossing and turning in the bunk below, he thought of saying something, but decided against it. Instead he let the day's events roll around in his head.
He still wasn't keen on tomorrow's plan but that's what everyone wanted to do, that in itself puzzled him, what was it with getting up close and personal with animals that could kill you with one swipe of their paw. Even though Orlak and Rekton had those stun guns and personal force fields something could go terribly wrong real fast. Not only that, but he was pretty sure they would run into safari's as well. At least they weren't killing these animals as he first thought which was a good thing. Rekton said you could gauge a planet by the number of dangerous beasts roamed its surface. He had tried to explain as well as show his friends pictures off the internet of creatures that swam and crawled like sharks and various snakes. That was another thing he worried about; when he told them there were snakes that if bitten by them you would be dead in seconds, however because of their size no one seemed to be taking them seriously. From what he could tell, snakes didn't exist on the planets they were familiar with, although it sounded like some of the planets had semi-poisonous insects.
He was also pretty sure there were poisonous snakes slithering around Kruger, so they would have to be on guard at all times, death in the tall grass as it were.
Just before they were scheduled to leave Matt went up to the bridge to watch Orlak go through his departure routine. Earlier, he had expressed an interest to Orlak about getting some lessons on flying. He was sitting in the co-pilots seat while Rekton and Vasta stood watching the scanner screen from behind.
"Are you going to do a quick long range scan?" Asked Matt.
Orlak looked at him,
"If we were back in our galaxy I probably would, but here?"
"Well it's just something Amber, and even Grak used to do," replied Matt. Rekton chuckled,
"Grak only does it because he almost hit a freighter once. He keeps forgetting to turn his "coorlink" on which does just about the same thing only not as far out."
"Matt does have a point," replied Orlak, "I've been getting sloppy lately, well let's just check," The scanner revealed all the previously noted satellites, the International space station which was currently on the other side of the world, as well as assorted space junk orbit over earth as well. However there was a brief flash that caught Rekton's eye.
"Hold on there Orlak," he said, "What was that?
"I don't know, replied the pilot, it better not be a flutter, I paid good credits on the last instrument calibration to make sure the scanner didn't do that. Where was it?" Rekton pointed to where the scanner was picking up a couple of satellites.
"What's "flutter" asked Matt, Orlak pointed to the screen.
"Basically it's when your long range scanner first comes on," explained Orlak.
"Sometimes the scanner will think there's something out there; perhaps false data picked up as it was shutting down, and "remembered" when you re-activate it. I recently paid extra credits to make sure the scanner wouldn't do that."
"So does that mean there's a ship out there?" Asked Matt.
Chapter 72
Titan Stand Chapter 72
"Since nobody on this planet seems to have maneuverable spacecraft other than that tiny space station," observed Rekton, "The only other conclusion we can make is that someone has followed us here, now…Who could that be?"
"You don't think it's those crazy Malhazars do you?" Said Matt, visions of Holliqua chasing him across two galaxies. The normally quiet Vasta Tramik then spoke up,
"The Malhazars may be many things, and take their vendettas to extreme lengths, but I seriously doubt this is them."
"I tend to agree with him," added Orlak, "If that wasn't flutter which I'm beginning to doubt, we just may have a raider hiding behind those satellites waiting for a chance to jump us." with that, he immediately went to cloaking mode.
"Watch that scanner closely," he called out, "We're leaving right now, if there is a raider out there, I've got a couple tricks up my sleeve that hopefully will flush him out."
As they powered up and began to move, there was the tiniest flash on the screen. Flipping down his optic disk, Matt spotted it still within the "signature" of the satellites out on the fringes of the scanner's range.
"Jaholb!" Exclaimed, Rekton, "I saw that. So are you heading out into space, or what?"
"I don't want to alert them," replied Orlak. "I want them to think we're unawares and just going about our business…Matt, Are there any uninhabited islands we could land on? I'm hoping our disappearance will make whoever is out there curious, and start looking for us. I'll shut down our stealth mode to make it a little easier for them."
Matt consulted his trusty world atlas studying the South Pacific.
"Well there are a number of Island chains out there, we could try the Kiribati island group, then east of there is Howland Island, th
at's where Amelia Earhart was trying to land. Seems like I read somewhere it's a bird refuge now, let's try there."
Eventually dropping down to five thousand feet, the Azani came screaming in over the water at close to nine hundred miles an hour while Matt tried matching what his atlas was showing compared to what they were seeing on the scanner.
After several long swing a round's and passes, they headed for what Matt was sure was Howland Island. It was a kidney shaped island that was apparently without many trees. When he spotted the old light beacon, Matt knew they were at the right spot. The scanner revealed there were no other life forms other that birds present, so Orlak set down near the abandoned beacon. The heat hit them like a hammer as they opened the hatch.