The Interstellar

by David Lund

  They reached the cool entry to the palace a couple of minutes later, where even though the temperature was still very hot, it felt deliciously cool next to the scorching heat outside. Michael rested for a few moments against a wall, sweating profusely.

  “Maybe we overestimated your capacity of dealing with the heat,” Gareen said, obviously worried.

  Another Henfor had appeared by his side and both aliens were talking quietly to each other whilst looking at Michael. The latter was starting to see stars, he imagined he probably had sunstroke. His vision was foggy, and he felt as if he might pass out. Both Henfor grabbed him and half dragged, half carried him through the halls. They ended up in a room where there was a large sofa bed with many cushions. They threw him onto the bed and Michael saw Gareen fiddle with a control panel near the door. The temperature in the room suddenly dropped at least fifteen degrees and Michael closed his eyes and embraced the deliciously cool air.

  *

  The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake quite roughly. He opened his eyes and saw Caitlin looking over him with a concerned look on her face.

  “Captain, are you okay?” He realized he had a slight headache, but apart from that felt rather good.

  He sat up slowly.

  “I’m okay. What happened?” Caitlin kept a hand on his shoulder as she answered.

  “You passed out. The Henfor stuck you in this room and turned the temperature right down to eighteen and then poured something down your throat. That was about half an hour ago. Then they came to fetch me. They said you should feel better.”

  “I do. The heat on this planet is something, huh?”

  “You spent too long in the sun. I must admit it feels very nice in here.”

  “How is the rest of the crew holding up?”

  Caitlin stood and walked slowly around the room taking it in. In here too were several pictures of animals, but Michael was focusing on his first officer. Her pale face had taken on a dark tinge since they had been here, and her red hair had deepened, it was almost the colour of blood. He thought she looked quite beautiful in that moment.

  “They are sitting in that big lounge we saw this morning, with several fans blowing in their faces, talking things over with the Henfor. Barneen should be back from his meeting soon.”

  “Then we should be there too.” He got up unsteadily, but after a few steps, seemed fine. He opened the door and the heat blasted him as if he had just opened the oven door after several hours of cooking time. He stuck his head back into the cool room, took a deep lungful of air and walked out into the hall, Caitlin right behind him.

  A Henfor called Corneen was outside the door and escorted them to the great hall where the rest of the crew was assembled. They were all sitting around the table, and were obviously having trouble with the heat too. Sweat was pouring down their faces and their clothes were sticking to their skin. Four large fans had been placed around the room in attempt to cool them down. Michael smiled at the sight of the six Henfor in the room: Gareen, Kareen, Videem, Barneen, and two others Michael didn’t know; they were all wrapped up with very thick, bright pink coats.

  “Michael,” Barneen boomed as he entered. “How are you feeling? I heard you had a little trouble with the heat?”

  “I’m fine.” He looked at the new Henfor and nodded politely.

  “This is Hugneen,” Gareen said. “President of the Northern continent, and this is his companion Grolreen.”

  “Michael Edwards, it is a pleasure to meet you.” The President said, as he stood to greet him. He was tall, almost as a tall as Barneen, but very thin. He had the same dark, crinkly skin and white hair as the rest of them, but his tall, thin shape made him look, in Michael’s mind, like a large insect.

  The other was shorter and fatter, probably only slightly taller than Michael.

  “Likewise.”

  “Michael,” Barneen said. “The president here has an idea on how to save your friends.”

  Michael sat down, intrigued. Hugneen sat at the same time and cleared his throat.

  “Yes, we have been developing a new technology that should help you with your quest.” He pause, it seemed for suspense. Everyone around the table was looking at him, waiting.

  “Yes, a technology we have been working on for years: isomorphic projections.”

  “Holograms?” Michael asked.

  “Indeed,” Hugneen answered, smiling a large Henfor smile. “Holograms. We will be able to disguise a ship and enter Friiist territory.”

  “But, President,” Gareen said. “What about the ships’ codes. They will know it isn’t one of theirs.”

  “I think this is where I come in,” Videem said, speaking for the first time. “After the time I spent working with the Friiist, I’ve learned many of their ships codes, and copied much of the navigation data. I know where they go, what path they take, and their procedures.”

  “Yes,” Barneen said. “Videem will be a valuable asset on this mission.”

  “But,” Caitlin said. “Won’t they know that Videem stole this information? After all, when he saved us, he blew his cover.”

  “They never knew everything I took, and they only have suspicious. I hid my movements. They will not know.”

  “Let’s take a step back,” Michael said. “How does this holographic technology work?”

  The other Henfor, Grolreen, leaned forwards.

  “Grolreen is the engineer who fine tuned the isomorphic projections,” Hugneen said.

  “Its really quite simple,” Grolreen said. The translation matrix made his voice come out as quite high pitched and winy. “We can copy the image of almost anything and then project it on to something else, disguising it.”

  That sounded rather simplistic in Michael’s opinion.

  “But what about when it moves?”

  “Oh, the system adapts itself. It’s really quite ingenious. Allow me to show you.” He stood and made his way over to a pad on the other side of the table.

  “Videem, if you might stand up for me, and Ms Highcliff too.” Both Videem and Lindsey stood and faced Grolreen.

  “Okay, now I’m going to copy the human’s image and project it onto Mr Videem.” He pressed a few keys on his pad and Michael was amazed when he suddenly had two Lindseys standing in front of him. He could not tell the difference between them. They looked exactly the same.

  “If you could walk around for us, Videem.” One of the Lindseys paced back and forth in front of the

  table.

  “But,” Jean said amazed. “Videem is much taller than Lindsey, if it is a projection, why can’t we see the rest of his body?”

  “That’s the beauty of this system,” Hugneen smiled. “It can camouflage anything.”

  “Almost anything,” Grolreen added. “The projectors hide the rest of Videem’s body. It is still there, if you were to throw a rock above the image of Ms Highcliff, you would hit Videem’s head. It is just invisible because it is projecting something else.”

  “This is amazing technology, sir,” Jean said, shaking his head in admiration.

  “I have spent many years working on it.”

  “And it can be adapted to one of your ships?” Michael wanted to know.

  “Certainly, we shall have to do some tests, but I don’t foresee any problems.”

  “And where are we going to get a ship to copy?” Lindsey asked.

  “We don’t actually need the ship itself,” Hugneen said. “Only the characteristics, which thanks to Videem, we have several of in the data banks to choose from.”

  “Good,” Michael said, enthusiastically. “Let’s get to work.”

  18

  Two hundred kilometres south of Barneen’s palace, in the largest underground prison on Henfor, Kaywal was being held in a top security cell. He was alone, hungry and hot. He hated this world, where he could barely breathe and where the air was too stuffy. Luckily for him, the Henfor weren’t complete barbarians and had set the temperature of the cell at ten degrees,
which was still too warm for Kaywal’s liking, but then they didn’t want him relaxed, and it was still cool enough for him not to be too dehydrated. It had only been two days and he already felt the effects of the heat. His skin was continuously glistening with sweat, and his breathing was laboured. He had trouble staying upright and spent most of his time sitting or lying down. He had nothing to do, and just four blank, stone walls to look at. On one wall, there was a heavyset, metal door, that wouldn’t budge even if was hit by the strongest of hurricanes.

  So all he could do was sit there and think. He thought about many things. He thought about how Videem, (who he had known as Valall while he had been disguised as a Friiist) someone he had come to trust and respect, had betrayed him. He was a filthy Henfor. How had he not seen this? He had lived with the foul traitor for months on the same ship. How had he never noticed even the hint of a strange accent? Or something odd that he had said? They had done their work well. After all Kaywal had looked into his service record before taking him on. Nothing had been amiss. How had they done it? They had falsified everything, and not one Friiist had been aware of it. It was shameful. Kaywal himself felt responsible. He would surely be dismissed for this. He hoped the members of his crew who had escaped would be able to warn the government. He imagined that Videem had stolen many documents, important data and navigational records. He would know many of their secrets. They had to change everything or the Henfor would take advantage of this information. If they hadn’t already. How long had it been since Videem had been giving information to his home world? He had worked on Kaywal’s ship for several months, but before that? How long had he spent among Friiist? It was a scary thought.

  The other thing that was bothering him was these Humans. What were they doing here? Hadn’t they caused enough damage with their damn probe? They destroy his world and have the nerve to come back with their tiny ship, thinking they can destroy them. How could they be so stupid? The Friiist had enough problems with the Henfor without dealing with another species. All they ever wanted was to be left alone. So now on top of the Henfor trouble, they had to deal with the Humans too. So Kaywal was feeling pretty miserable. Miserable and hungry, not a good combination.

  Once a day, a nutriment pack was shoved through a small letterbox sized hole in the door, containing a small biscuit and a plastic cup of water. It wasn’t enough to feed the ants that crawled across the floor, let alone Kaywal. The two times the hole opened to let the food through, he tried

  talking to the guard, but without a translator, it was hopeless. Kaywal didn’t speak any Henfor, never having studied the language, and the guard never said anything anyway.

  He had received his latest nutriment pack less than an hour ago so he was quite surprised when the letter box opened again and something was pushed through it. He was starving and jumped upon the package straight away. He ripped it open and shoved the biscuit into his mouth, he bit down hard and almost broke one of his teeth. He spat the food out, cursing and wondering whether this was some practical joke played by the Henfor.

  After checking his gums for blood with his finger, he knelt down and picked up the offending object. It looked exactly like one of the biscuits he had gotten until now, only he realized that it was made of stone. He expected to hear someone laughing on the other side of the door but there was only silence.

  He was about to throw the stone on the floor when something caught his eye. Something very faint was scribbled on the stone, so he almost hadn’t noticed it as it was off white, almost the same colour as the rock. He studied it more closely and realized it was writing, and not only that, his heart pounded as he also realized that it was Friiist writing. After a glance though, he noticed that it didn’t make sense, as they were just random letters. Maybe the Henfor did this on purpose to toy with him, it was the kind of thing they would do. He also noticed that the fourteenth letter of the alphabet was on the stone, which was most peculiar as it had been dropped from the language over twenty years ago. Something was bothering him about that letter, it took a few moments for him to remember, and then he did.

  About ten years ago, he had been on a mission to secure a Friiist security base near the sensor grid in order to pick up any Henfor activity and make sure no ships crossed the net. He was a Lieutenant commander back then, and he had worked under Captain Blayal, who had been with him during this mission. It wasn’t difficult work. They basically sat in an office with computers and monitored all communications. It was usually a job reserved for lower ranks but Captain Blayal liked to do the dirty work every now and then, so he had asked his subordinate to accompany him.

  As they had sat there talking, Kaywal had picked up a ship near the border that seemed suspicious to him. It’s flight path was slightly off, and it’s energy signature erratic. He had attempted to contact them over the radio, but they sent a written message saying they’d had engine trouble and had to reroute power from the communications array, so they had no audio.

  The odd thing was that in the message, the sender had used the fourteenth letter of the alphabet.

  Kaywal had not seen it in use for several years at that point. He pointed this fact out to Blayal, who agreed with the assessment. They sent a ship to investigate and it turned out to be a small craft containing three Henfor who had been spying on the observation post.

  Kaywal was commended for spotting this fault in the enemy. Blayal often joked afterwards that

  the fourteenth letter would be their new code if they ever wanted to communicate privately. And, funnily enough, three years later, Blayal was sent to a Henfor ship to negotiate some terms with one of their captains. They agreed ahead of time that if he ran into any trouble, he would send the fourteenth letter to Kaywal.

  After several hours without hearing anything from Blayal, Kaywal contacted the Henfor ship.

  They told him the captain was unavailable because of his meeting, but that he had sent a message for him. The message contained a short note that had nothing to do with the situation, but the fourteenth letter was written several times, and by looking at every letter after that one, Kaywal was able to read the real message: “In need of assistance.” Thanks to this, Kaywal was able to send a team to rescue the Captain, who was being tortured for information.

  Now as Kaywal stared down at the small scribbling on the stone, he noticed that the fourteenth letter was used several times. He read through the gibberish and found every letter that followed the fourteenth. As he had suspected, the end result was a coherent sentence: “Rescue coming, hold tight.”

  Even though the message was short and lacking in detail, it warmed his heart. They hadn’t given up on him. How they expected to get him out of this hell hole, Kaywal didn’t know, but he couldn’t wait. There was nothing he could do however, so he sat back down on his bench, trying not to think of how hungry he was.

  19

  They decided to use two ships. Barneen gave them two small crafts to use, because they were harder to spot on sensors if they were discovered. The first ship would hold Videem, Michael, Caitlin and Lindsey, while Jean, along with Gareen, Jal and Franck, were to be on the other vessel.

  The rest of the crew were to stay on Henfor and help coordinate.

  The decision to use two ships was widely debated. Michael thought it was an unacceptable risk while Barneen believed there was a much greater chance of success if using two different crafts.

  The Friiist would believe only one had crossed the sensor net and forget the other one. Michael personally thought that this was wishful thinking but he could see the advantage of having more than one ship, so he reluctantly agreed.

  They were still on Henfor at the moment, preparing to leave. Grolreen was installing the holographic software onto the spaceships. They would depart from the ground as the ships were small enough that they didn’t need to be in space dock. They were about twenty kilometres outside of the palace, where there was a large shuttle bay, containing many different varieties of ships; all of them quite small
, designed to hold no more than five people, and even then, they would be rather cramped. Each one was roughly the size of a small hatchback back on Earth.

  The problem of how to go underwater was the real issue. They had already decided that they would have to take control of one of the Friiist’s underwater machines, but they had no idea where they would find them, or how to get into them. This concerned Michael, but only slightly. The Henfor too, seemed unconcerned about the flimsiness of this plan. The main problem, everyone thought, was getting past the sensor net. After that, they would improvise.

  It was foolish, Michael knew, but he didn’t want to sit around and makes plans for longer. He was anxious to find Adrian and Marshall, and get them back alive. He hoped they were okay. He had imagined horrible scenarios where they were tortured for information, or locked in a freezing room without food or water.

  While they were waiting for the ships to be ready, Kareen had taken the group to a nearby building where they were to practise shooting with the electronic guns. The practise area was just a room with four bare walls, and as they stood there, they wondered what they were supposed to be shooting at.

  “This model has a power cell that can be removed, as it needs to be changed every two hundred shots,” Kareen was saying, as he demonstrated opening the gun and taking out the cell. He held the small blue battery shaped object before replacing inside the gun. “So, if the gun doesn’t fire, you’re out of power.” He reached inside his white robe and pulled out a small pouch. “I will give each of you one of these. This pouch contains ten power cells. That gives you two thousand shots, each.

  Hopefully that should be enough, as we don’t really want to do too much shooting.” He put the pouch back inside his hidden pocket. “This model is the standard issued on military vessels, because it is small, light and practical. We have more sophisticated weaponry, but this will get the job done.

  “Now, it has three settings. You see these three buttons on the top? These are the triggers and are each set at a different power ratio. The lower button sends out a feeble charge, which is enough to stun your opponent; the middle button will severely burn the receiver and the third will send out a charge so powerful that it will destroy brain functions and kill the victim.”