“Your DSL operator just left the landing zone and should be back to your ship shortly. In fact, she’s the one who said you might enjoy the time away. She said she could cover your ship until our new defenses are installed.”
“She did?” he said. Damn no way to back out now.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “She also suggested you should bring your medic and your load broker down with you since they both have an interest in archaeology.”
They do?
“I suppose it would be worth the time,” he said. “As soon as she gets back aboard we’ll be down. We’ll be there in an hour or so if that works.”
“Excellent. That will be mid-morning local time. I will show you around personally,” she said. “Dress for a walk. There is a lot to see depending on what interests you.”
She cut the comm from her end leaving Ethan confused. Something isn’t right with reality here.
Tapping into the commlink he said, “Ammo and Kaycee. Makhbar’s assistant just invited us to tour the operations down on the planet. Get dressed for a walkabout and meet me in the hangar deck in about ten minutes.”
“I was about to have another go with Leo,” Kaycee said. “What swings?”
“Dono, but Nuko thinks there’s some reason for you two to be armchair archaeologists. She made sure you both got tagged in the invite.”
“Wonder if it has anything to do with the window washer?” Ammo said.
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
Almost an hour later, Ethan guided the shuttle toward the coordinates they’d given him for their landing pad. As they approached, it became obvious that the ridges that looked like mountains from space, were colossal structures.
The rock spires that rose a kilometer above the sandy surface weren’t stone but rather thin towers with arching causeways that bridged between them. The artificial terrain spread to the horizon in every direction and what looked natural from above was as an immense ancient city.
“I can tell why he’s paranoid about keeping this location secret,” he said as he stared out the windows. “I suddenly feel insignificant.”
“It’s probably why he’s such a pushy egg buster,” Kaycee said. She hung over the back of the pilot’s seat gawking like a tourist on her first trip to a big city. The view was so overwhelming that Ethan failed to notice her proximity.
“He’s pushing again?” Ammo asked.
“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “I just figured working in a place like this would go to a person’s head pretty fast.”
“Actually he is, but it’s minor,” he said, pulling his attention back to the console in front of him. He knew that Marti would have taken over if he’d lost his focus for long enough to be a problem.
“What now?” Ammo asked.
“Nuko said they asked us to provide surface-to-surface transport of the cargo containers so they can load up the payload for the return leg,” he said.
“Figures,” she said. “Makhbar’s tried to change the terms on every load I’ve brokered for him.”
“You’ve arranged previous loads out here?” he asked.
“Yah. Ten or twelve,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get an exclusive with him for several years now. Unfortunately, most of the captains I’ve had do a run for him, haven’t had the stomach to deal with him.”
“Ten or twelve runs? Is he starting a colony?” Kaycee asked.
She shook her head. “He just flogs a big operation. There are probably a thousand people out here at this point. Maybe more.”
“Don’t archaeologists run on their own profit?” Ethan asked. “This kind of operation has to have an astronomical overhead.”
“It does, but he’s got the pouches for it,” she said. “He’s the exclusive license holder on the New Centauri find. It was the biggest archaeological technology recovery in Coalition history, and every credit those royalties turned went into his personal bank.”
“All of it?” Kaycee asked.
“He’s made at least forty trillion off of it so far,” Ammo said, shrugging it off like that kind of profit was no big deal.
Kaycee stood up and whistled. “Holy frak, that’s more than Smythe Biomedical netted in the last decade.”
“And here I thought we were doing good to pay off the Dawn,” Ethan said.
“Problem is that kind of insane wealth has made him a bit of a crazy-flatch.”
“Whyso?” he asked.
“He’s chasing unicorns,” she said. “He’s sinking money into digs all over Coalition space looking for the Shan Takhu Homeworld.”
“And he thinks this rock might be it?” Ethan said, glancing out the window and wondering if maybe he was right.
“Who knows? But if he didn’t think it was moving him in that direction, he wouldn’t be here. He tends to let peons do the digging work, and he walks in at the end and skims off the shiny stuff,” she said. “And the glory.”
“If this is the end of their run here and he’s about to rob the ghosts, why did we bring guns?” he asked. “Weapons like that are more of a long-term commitment in my thinking.”
“That’s a good question isn’t it?” Ammo said. “Maybe he really found something this time.”
Ethan pulled the nose of the shuttle up and twisted it to the side as he lined up on the landing pad. Several people stood off to the side watching him make his landing. “Is that Makhbar?” he asked, noticing that one of them stood apart and was glaring up into the morning sun.
Ammo leaned forward to look out the window. “Yah, that’s him,” she said.
“Wonderful, he’s about to get a face full of dirt.” It always made him nervous making an approach with spectators, especially one who was rich enough to buy whole planets. The idea of throwing sand at him only made it worse.
“Even if he’s a celebrity, he’s an archaeologist. It won’t be the first time he’s gotten dusted.”
Still, Ethan eased the shuttle down, trying to bias the thrusters away from the spectators and hold their orientation with the top attitude jets. It worked even if it made the landing a lot tougher than it needed to be.
“Well done, Captain,” Makhbar said, raising his voice enough to carry over the stiff wind as they stepped out onto the pad. “I can see your DSL pilot isn’t the only one on your crew with exceptional skills.” He nodded deeply, almost bowing but remained behind his other people.
Dr. Tegan came forward smiling. “Welcome to Sha-Kahna Ri.” She lowered her head as a gust kicked up a swirl of sand and whipped it into their faces with enough violence to make his cheeks sting. “Let’s get you into a crawler and out of this wind.”
When she held out her hand toward the edge of the pad Ethan noticed a large, dirt colored rover that he hadn’t seen as they landed. It blended into the surrounding terrain perfectly. The others who had been there to greet them were already climbing aboard.
The interior of the vehicle was luxurious. A small cockpit occupied the nose and the rest of the interior space served as a conference room. Twelve high-back chairs surrounded a real wood table and padded lounging divans ringed the walls. Dr. Makhbar had taken the seat at the aft end of the table and he gestured for the captain to take the opposite end. He waved Kaycee and Ammo to the seats to either side of Ethan.
“Ms. Rayce, I believe this may be the first time we’ve met face to face,” Makhbar said. “Captain, it is an honor to meet you in person.”
He looked at the doctor and smiled coldly dismissing her importance. If he only knew she was the only person at the table qualified to share his air supply, Ethan thought as he studied the xenoarchaeologist.
“This is quite the discovery,” Ammo said, moving the discussion to the find and off the small talk.
“Yes, we believe so,” Dr. Tegan said, joining them and taking a seat beside Makhbar.
“The Kahna were an extremely advanced space faring civilization, and this may be their home world. Although we don’t yet know how long they traversed the
stars we can tell through organic dating that they abandoned this world slightly over fifty thousand years ago,” he said. As he spoke, images of what may have been this city projected up out of the table. “At this point we think they may have been affiliated with, or direct descendants of, the Shan Takhu.”
Kaycee and Ethan both leaned forward to examine the projection.
“Do you have any examples of their written language?” she asked.
Makhbar glared at her but nodded. “Of course.” An image of what looked like some kind of inscription on a wall replaced the cityscape. “We also have audio recordings of the spoken form of the language.”
“Unfortunately, no one on our staff reads or speaks Un Takhu,” Tegan said. “We’ve tried to acquire a language consultant from the Shan Takhu Institute, but they are almost impossible to find.”
“That’s not Un Takhu,” Kaycee said, shaking her head.
Makhbar snorted and rolled his eyes. “If we’re not qualified to know that, what makes you think a medic on a freighter would know such a thing?”
Ethan was about to jump to her defense when he felt a firm hand grab his knee and squeeze. He wasn’t sure if he should squeak or glare, but he opted to shoot her a hairy eyeball.
“You’re right. I’m just guessing,” she said, smiling innocently.
“We will have that discussion later,” Ethan whispered in her direction.
“I am a scientist. I have no time for guesses,” Makhbar said, returning his attention to the captain and pointedly ignoring her. “This is why we are having you carry several select artifacts to the STI in Zone One for examination.”
“The artifacts are actually much more valuable than the payload you brought to us,” Tegan said.
“What are they?” Ammo asked.
“Operational machinery,” she said. “One of the problems we are having in this particular site is that over half the artifacts are still functioning. Autonomously.”
“After fifty thousand years?” Ethan asked.
“The Tarah Tacra Un is older than that,” Kaycee said.
“It is,” Makhbar said, glaring at her like she was something that was getting in his way while he was trying to impress someone with his knowledge. “What makes these specific pieces of machinery interesting is that they appear to be operating with no power supply.”
“Perpetual motion is a myth,” Tegan said.
“My engineer explained to me that perpetual motion is using energy that we cannot quantify with the tools available,” Ethan said.
“Whatever the case may be, we do not have a qualified power systems engineer on our staff at the moment so we must have these artifacts looked over by someone at STI,” Makhbar said.
“Why don’t you have a power systems engineer?” Ammo asked.
“He was aboard the Saknussemm when it disappeared,” Tegan said.
“And you think the pirates took him,” Ethan said.
“While that may be a reasonable hypothesis, we do not know that to be a fact,” Makhbar said. “There is no evidence to support such an assertion.”
“In fact, there may be,” the captain said. “We have a prisoner aboard that FleetCom ordered us to transport back to Zone One. He was with Jetaar when they attacked our ship.”
“And why would this support your conjecture?” he asked.
“When we interrogated him, we discovered that he was an archaeology grad student,” Ammo said. “He’s been resistive to deep questioning, but he seems fairly familiar with your work here.”
“Really?” Dr. Tegan asked. “What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot other than that his name is Leonard Stahl and he’s—”
“Excuse me, did you Leo Stahl?” One of the other passengers jumped up and stepped toward the table. Makhbar’s glare stopped him in mid stride.
“Pardon my interruption, Doctor,” he said.
“This is our logistics manager, Ricardo Stahl,” Dr. Tegan said. “Leonard would be his son.”
“He was scheduled to do field work here before he completed his thesis,” Stahl said.
“The young man was aboard the Saknussemm,” Makhbar added.
“I guess that proves my hypothesis then doesn’t it,” Ethan said.
Chapter Seventeen
Ethan stared at the comm screen in the shuttle while he waited for Ammo to work her charm on Makhbar and his people. He didn’t like letting her handle this side of things, but when it came to the irascible xenoarchaeologist, he had no desire to waste time on negotiation. Instead, he felt it was a better use of his time finding out why Nuko had set this whole situation up.
“I caught the logistics manager’s name when he signed off on the bill of lading,” she said. “I knew it might have been a coincidence but, I thought you might want to go down there and looksee yourself.”
“The problem now is that his father expects us to release him,” Ethan said.
“And we can’t do that because FleetCom wants to question him,” she said. “I was afraid it might go that way.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Ammo’s explaining that to Makhbar, but he’s trying to persuade us that we should let him go.”
“Persuade?”
“Incentivize? Bribe?” Ethan said. “Kaycee and I are waiting in the shuttle for her to finish teaching him about reality. As soon as she gets back aboard, we’ll be on our way.”
“Here she comes, and she’s not alone,” Kaycee said pointing toward the edge of the landing pad. “It looks like Dr. Tegan.”
“We’re about to be gear up,” he said. “And I think we’re bringing a guest.”
At least it isn’t Makhbar. Or the angry dad.
Pulling herself through the door, Ammo swung into one of the rear seats and nodded for the doctor to take one beside her. “Stahl wanted to come along to talk to his son, but I figured it might be best for him to stay down here until we can decide how to proceed. I got him to agree to wait by offering to let Taryn talk to Leo first. She knows him and that might help.”
Taryn? Now we’re on a first name basis with the client’s people? Ethan nodded but didn’t say anything as he turned toward the controls. After locking down the hatch, he powered up the drive.
“Thank you for being so accommodating, Captain,” Dr. Tegan said. “I know it can be challenging working with Dr. Makhbar. He’s difficult to deal with until you get to know him.”
“Especially with pirates in the mix,” Ethan said. Floating up from the pad, the shuttle lurched sidewise as a blast of wind broadsided them. “Glad that didn’t happen on the way down.”
“The winds get stronger as the day progresses,” she said. “By local noon it’s almost impossible to go outside at all. Fortunately, a lot of the work we do now is inside the Kahna Ri buildings. There’s a vast tunnel network that connects everything together.”
“Interesting,” he said. It wasn’t, but he tried to sound polite as he nosed the shuttle upward and slid the throttle forward. They shot away from the surface before another blast could carry them back to the ground.
“So, what do you expect to achieve from talking to the window washer?” Kaycee asked as the sound of the air screaming by outside dropped to where it was possible to talk without shouting.
“Window washer?” Dr. Tegan looked confused.
“When we found Leo, he was swinging from a tether on the outside of the ship watching Kaycee take a shower,” Ethan said, without turning around. “It wasn’t necessarily the best way for him to make his introduction.”
“Although it was better than meeting him as part of Jetaar’s raiding party,” Ammo pointed out.
“How did he get out there?” Dr. Tegan asked.
“He was very lucky,” he said, glancing over his shoulder but keeping his hands on the controls. “His shuttle was shredded when it got caught in the crossfire with the Blackwing. Fortunately for him, he was wearing an EVA suit and ended up pinned to the hull by g-forces when we made our escape. Once we got away and t
he coils powered up, he was smart enough to tether himself in place.”
“We think he crawled around looking for a way to get inside, but we keep the doors locked,” Kaycee said. “If I hadn’t seen him looking in my window, he’d have run out of air in his suit before we’d have known he was there.”
“That’s extraordinary,” she said.
“So, you didn’t answer my question,” Kaycee said. “What are you hoping to achieve by talking to him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He knows me since I was one of his academic advisors in school, so maybe he’ll open up and tell me how he ended up working for Captain Jetaar. At least then, we might find out what happened to the rest of the passengers on the ship. A lot of them were close friends and family of others on our team.”
“I should warn you he seems pretty committed to Jetaar,” Ethan said.
“Honestly that’s part of what concerns me,” she said. “He’s young and might be easily malleable, but the Saknussemm has only been missing a month at this point. How someone could swing him to the other side that fast is beyond me.”
“Unless they had set him up for it in school,” Kaycee said. “It’s not beyond possibility that someone approached him before he got out here.”
“Oh… I don’t …” Her voice trailed off and the captain turned to see if she was still talking. Her face broadcast that the suggestion fit in with something she knew. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t want to feed you any ideas, but when you talk to him I think you’ll understand,” she said.
“I just …” She shook her head. “If someone got to him before he filed for his field work internship, then the Saknussemm’s disappearance ...”
“We’ve suspected he’s still holding something huge back,” Ammo said. “That could be it, but we had no way to even know where to approach it.”
A control indicator flashed on the console and Ethan handed landing control over to Marti. Unlocking his seat, he swiveled to face his passengers. “Dr. Tegan, if you don’t mind I need to establish a couple ground rules before this goes any further,” he said as the shuttle adjusted its heading to line up on the hangar deck.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 29