Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  Paranak swivelled subtly from side to side as Richard took Kirrina’s hand and hustled her out of the Control Centre. Once they were alone in the Moss Room, which before leaving the captain’s chair, he had set to simulate the beautiful hillside on Arshonna, he turned to her in excitement.

  “From what I can remember of the information I just worked through, we can move to the safe transfer point with an ever-increasing velocity, saving hours on the transit time!” he said as he swung her around jubilantly.

  Kirrina smiled back, sharing his elation at their successful escape from the desolation of the deserted Outpost. “Yes, Paranak says their ships have always done that in systems as empty as this one, and if I read him correctly, the implication was that they don’t normally wait to get the full distance these precautionary principles recommend, either. The Narlav approach is more pragmatic, and they haven’t observed any of the orbit-altering effects, even when dimensioning-out quite close to a planet. He seemed surprised that the Arshonnan knowledge banks didn’t mention anything about this.”

  “Quite the ego, huh?”

  “He’s not so bad, once you get to know him,” Kirrina replied. “It’s more that he wears his pride like a favourite jacket, so all can see it. I think that’s the way all Narlavs are.” She sat down and looked into the distance, where the hills rose once more and seemed to blend with the fluffy white clouds.

  Perhaps that’s why they don’t bother with clothes…! Richard sat beside her, and looked at her sideways, catching her smile at his thought.

  “So,” He continued verbally, as was his preference. “What are we going to do with him? I mean, maybe we can accept him, but then we haven’t been fighting Narlavs for the last five hundred odd years. The Arshonnans may decide to lynch him!”

  “I’ve been worrying about that,” she admitted. “The thing is, when he caught me and started to strangle me the second time, while you were in your ‘coffin’, he could have killed me, and that would have been the end of it.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Exactly. Despite his strange attitudes and harsh approach to life, despite the lack of any real family life on Craklav to instil values we cherish, this particular alien felt his honour required him to spare us. And not just to spare us, either, but actually promise to protect and help us.”

  “As long as we don’t run into any of his own kind,” Richard reminded her gently.

  “I’ve already programmed our flight. We go straight to Arshonna, so we shouldn’t have any problems with Narlavs there!” she said in answer to his qualifying comment.

  Richard grinned. “So, what do we do with him?”

  “I think we need to follow his example,” Kirrina replied. “Just as he promised to defend us, we must promise to defend him.”

  Richard thought about this for a moment, then slowly nodded his agreement. “You realise the Arshonnans may not like that. We may have to leave. Just after you have made it to your real home.”

  Kirrina’s eyes glistened. “If my people cannot accept this, this… friend of ours, and acknowledge him as a symbol of the start to peace between our peoples, then I don’t think I would want to live with them, anyway.”

  Richard absorbed this in silence, studying the peaceful, unpolluted hills in the far distance. “When you gave me your mind on all that had happened since I was nearly cut in two, I realised that Paranak had changed you deeply.” He looked into her blue eyes sincerely. “I think I am starting to understand how you feel. I think somehow that ugly block of a being has got under my skin, too.”

  Kirrina smiled as she sensed his attitudes were following where hers had travelled in the strange and difficult weeks while she had worked and eaten, discussed and regularly argued with Paranak. “Let’s have a meal together, then perhaps we should go and keep him company.”

  Richard grinned. “I’d like that. Especially the meal with you!”

  “I think he’s very lonely.”

  “I suppose he must be. I can’t imagine being the only alien on a strange ship going to meet my sworn enemies,” Richard commented thoughtfully as Kirrina started to conjure up their first meal together in two months. “He’s braver than I will ever be!”

  Kirrina cuddled him. “I don’t know; I can’t help but remember how you struggled to defend me when you thought he had escaped! I think you are the bravest–”

  Richard stopped her complimentary exuberance by the simple – and pleasurable – expedient of kissing her. “It did hurt,” he murmured after a couple minutes.

  Kirrina smiled. “Let’s eat!”

  About half an hour later, suitably replenished by the marvellous food that the synthesiser had produced so easily and in such generous quantities, they stepped back onto the bare space behind the three chairs in the Control Centre.

  “Status report,” Richard requested as he took his seat with increased confidence and a more relaxed feeling.

  “All systems continue to function correctly, course is confirmed, and defensive Shells are operating at minimum with automatic sensory interlock to maximise as may prove necessary. Long range scanners indicate conditions back on Outpost Twenty Seven are much as when we left, or at least they were about thirty minutes ago when the light I am analysing left there, and short range scanners do not reveal any solid objects bigger than a Macral in our path.”

  “Thanks,” Richard said thoughtfully. “How long to Grey Space entry point?”

  “Just a few minutes, sir.”

  “Do you want to take a break now, or wait until we have made the transition?”

  Paranak’s eye-space wrinkled as he tried to handle the unfamiliar situation that Richard’s words had put him in, as he was not used to being given a choice by his commanding officer. “I will stay,” he said finally.

  Richard nodded. “Kirrina, could you confirm our navigation thus far?”

  His fiancée worked rapidly to complete the formality. “Course is as originally set, entry is possible in a few minutes, as the Second Officer indicated.”

  “So, Paranak,” Richard took a deep breath. “This course will take you into unknown territory.”

  “Yes. Both physically and mentally. We Narlavs from Craklav consider a large section of the Galaxy to be our dominion, but it extends less than half the distance towards this Arshonna. Most of what is worth fighting for in our territory is comprised of mineral-rich planets, which enable us to manufacture all the replacement parts we need to maintain our fleet, repair our cities and supply our wars.”

  “Who are you at war with now?” Richard wondered out loud.

  “Currently there are no wars scheduled until some time about two of your years from now – the last one was held on Titanum – we hold our wars on the mineral planets, too. All the fighting is performed with traditional weapons, similar to the swords of your own history, but far heavier and vastly more efficient.”

  “You make it sound like war is some kind of game!” Richard responded incredulously.

  Kirrina smiled at Richard’s insightful comment.

  “Exactly,” Paranak responded immediately in all seriousness.

  “You mean it is?”

  “The only kind of game that we Narlavs think is worthy to play. I was in training for the next round; it will be held on ‘Trad’, another of the richly endowed planets about which we dispute ownership with the Narlavs of Kontar, the dominion next to ours. The atmosphere on Trad is thin but tolerable, the temperature hotter than we prefer and the air too dry, but that is as it should be for a war. And the rocky terrain allows for the development of tactics to outwit the opposition. I was hoping to qualify for the offensive team; we will take back what is rightfully ours – what we lost on Titanum!” He sounded very proud and sure of himself, until he remembered just who his companions were. “Now, that challenge is gone for me.”

  “To be replaced by another, greater one, my blood-brother,” Kirrina said reassuringly.

  “So, how is the winner decided in these events
?” Richard asked, after allowing Paranak a moment to recover from the realisation of his loss.

  “That is easy; whoever is left alive, wins.”

  Richard swallowed. “You mean, the team with the least casualties?”

  “No, if a team still has warriors who live, even severely injured ones, they will continue to fight. Last time the Kontar team had seven left out of the original four thousand and ninety six that they selected; we intend to exact revenge and have more than twenty still standing to prove our superiority! Then we will truly deserve to possess Trad for the following sixteen of our years.”

  Richard glanced over at Kirrina and saw that she had heard this story before. “I thought wars on Earth were bad!”

  “In some ways they are worse;” Kirrina countered with great care. “When the Narlavs fight each other, no one destroys valuable farmland, no one performs an attack unannounced, no one kills children, no one tortures the captured enemy.”

  “Good point.”

  Paranak slapped himself on the side of his head with a powerful, self-complimentary gesture. “Of course we do not torture the captured enemy; none would be left alive to allow themselves to be captured.”

  “Well, I’m glad you do not carry out these wars with your Pakak and Warrnam, it sounds like enough damage is done on the ground without any such sophistications,” Richard remarked feelingly.

  “In our primitive past it was not as it is now,” Paranak admitted. “But we have risen above our savage beginnings and become a noble race!”

  No one commented on this, in fact no one spoke for a considerable length of time.

  Finally Kirrina broke the silence. “It is good that we have escaped; I would not wish to face such fearsome fighters again.”

  Paranak spoke without taking his eyes from the instruments before him. “We will not be safe until we enter what you refer to as Grey Space,” he contradicted her with great gravity. “In fact, though it would require the unlikely assumption of their arrival during the few hours of our movement to the departure point, our situation now is much more hazardous than it was when we had just left the Outpost.”

  “How can that be?” Kirrina sounded confused. “You told me yourself that the Pakak patrol always drops out of Grey Space close to the destination planet. We are far from there now; they could never hope to catch up to us before we disappeared from their scanners, and it is still impossible to follow a ship into Grey Space once the Star Drive is fully engaged, isn’t it?”

  Paranak took a deep breath. “Yes, that is true, unless of course they knew our destination, then they could just make a similar jump, and they would probably emerge at the other end within seconds of our arrival.”

  “But they don’t, do they?” Richard questioned.

  “There are many possible destinations, so they would not be able to follow unless they had enough ships to investigate all the possibilities,” Paranak said slowly. “And I do not consider that to be at all likely.”

  “So, how could their arrival constitute a threat?” Kirrina continued, still puzzled by his assertion of possible danger.

  “Remember that they would see us over thirty minutes before we received an indication of their arrival, if they dropped into normal space near the Outpost.”

  “How’s that?” Richard asked simply.

  “Our image is continually visible at the hypothetical point at which this hypothetical ship will arrive in say, two minutes,” Paranak began, painstakingly laying out the facts of life concerning astronomical distances and the speed of light, which ordinarily seems fast, but is comparatively slow when such huge tracts of space are involved. “Admittedly it is an image of where our ship was, say thirty minutes ago, but it would be a very simple matter to compute our direction, velocity and acceleration, and thus determine our actual location at this instant. Are you still following my example?”

  Both Richard and Kirrina responded affirmatively.

  “However, it would take a further thirty minutes for the image of the Narlav ship to be seen here, as the light would start the journey to us only when the ship dropped out of Grey Space.”

  “I still don’t see how that helps them;” Kirrina complained. “They can’t cover the distance to this point as quickly as the light can.”

  “They could not catch us by movement through conventional space, it is true, but it would be a far simpler calculation from navigation principles well understood by my comrades to shift briefly through Grey Space over this insignificant distance and emerge within striking range of this ship.”

  “But that would cause a shift in the planetary orbits, it might make the system unstable!” Kirrina remarked, remembering the comments she had made to Richard a little earlier.

  “Theoretically. However, they have not seen this effect in practice. I myself have been in ships that have dimensioned out from much closer points, and the planetary orbits were unchanged when we returned. But even if they were very close, and it did change the orbit slightly, they would still do it in battle,” Paranak insisted, unperturbed. “In this case, they would not worry about the Outpost; there is no inhabited world to risk. Or no Narlavs… It would not matter to my people if the planet from which they collect their Batnokkan, their beryllium, is shifted onto a slightly more elliptical orbit.”

  Richard looked from Paranak to Kirrina in alarm. “Kirrina, how long will it be until we are at the safe departure point, and how long would it take to recalculate for a departure from here?”

  “We are pretty close; I’ll get you an instantaneous departure calculated in less than a minute,” she promised, suddenly scared by Paranak’s cold appraisal of the situation. “But I don’t want to have to do this.”

  “Hopefully we won’t need to,” Richard assured her. “It’s just to cover all possibilities, even this long shot.”

  “Okay, I have it worked out now,” Kirrina sighed, a long minute later. “We are pretty close to the correct point, so I don’t suppose we’d do any damage anyway.” She looked briefly at Paranak, wondering why something that in theory did not perturb her, should cause her such anxiety in reality.

  “Good,” Richard said quietly, relief evident in his voice. “Keep updating it to take into account our movement.”

  Kirrina nodded. “That’s fairly easy, once you’ve done–”

  “I have two ships on the short range scanner near the limits of detection,” Paranak interrupted. “It looks like they didn’t take into account our very significant acceleration! The navigators on my ship would never have made such an elementary error. I will have the Drive signatures analysed within a few minutes.”

  Richard leaned over and looked at the tiny flashes on the monitor showing the system layout. “Can you get us a visual?”

  “Negative, it’s too far,” Paranak responded. “That image is a couple of minutes old; they may have recalculated by now and already be jumping up closer as we speak!”

  “Okay, get us out of here as soon as you can!” Richard urged Kirrina. “Have you got that Drive signature yet?” He turned to Paranak again.

  “Not yet.” The alien sounded disappointed at having to respond in such a manner. “Our scan detector has only just locked on, so data will accumulate until we have enough to identify them.”

  “We need to move fast,” Richard concluded in a low voice in an attempt to avoid disturbing Kirrina’s calculations.

  I’m doing this as quickly as I can; why don’t you check my work? I don’t want to put us into the middle of a star by mistake!

  Richard switched his terminal to navigation and started to follow her seemingly endless list of figures and formulae.

  “We don’t have time for that; they will drop out in close formation surrounding our position and open up their N-beam weapons immediately!” Paranak predicted loudly. “Shell Fields now operating at maximum!” He announced as his only remaining contribution to their safety. “They’re HERE! Two Pakak with Star Drives now operating at low levels! Energy spectra are co
nsistent with the maintenance styles of my comrades from Craklav.”

  Richard looked up at the Arrowhead ships hanging close by, in time to see the green beads from their Negatruction weapons crawling rapidly towards them.

  “Do it now!” he urged loudly.

  “Here goes!” Kirrina said nervously.

  The ship shuddered as the leading edge of the highly potent energy touched the outer edge of their Shell Fields and started to bore inwards. A moment later the stars seemed to career off to the left, the formerly clear representation of each distant point blurred, and then disappeared entirely.

  The grey mist that took their place was unsettling, even though both Richard and Kirrina had seen it before, but both of them sighed with relief once the transition was complete, convinced that the uncertainties associated with their journey were infinitely preferable to an encounter with the Narlav hunters that they had scarcely managed to leave behind at Outpost Twenty-Seven.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Innovative techniques for Dolan’s permanent winter – Ekdrim, Arshonnan Planetary Explorer

  Latt looked out of the large window of the living room of his comfortably furnished apartment in Grand Centre, Alberta, and watched the snow whipping past in air cooled to minus forty. The sky was already getting dark; night came early in the high latitudes in which he found himself resident. The air was so cold, and the wind so severe and resolute in its attack against the front wall of the building, that a thick layer of ice had formed where the glass met the frame, despite the triple glazing. Latt shivered, just looking at it. Somehow the wind across… what was it called? Oh yes, Salisbury Plains! That wind doesn’t seem very bad now. He recalled the rest of that day, after leaving Stonehenge, especially the fabulous meal in that perverted part of London – what was it called again? And the next planned stop on their trip, which was to have been Venice. Only when he had called to check on progress before leaving for Heathrow airport, Ed had told him that Isaac wanted him to come back to help with the new reactor. Bugs! He shook his head, picturing the hardy creatures that were the only form of animal life he had known existed before leaving Rhaal. What an interesting term!