“If there is anyone who can hear me on the planet, and you have access to a functioning ship, get out now! Go to Frontier Post Nine! Perhaps you will find others already there. I am going to switch to the main viewscreen, so you can take with you this visual record of how to destroy a Vershonnan ship. Good hunting! This one is for Arshonna!” The view showing Stuona’s struggle to pilot their damaged Patrol Craft disappeared, to be replaced with one showing the stars above the ruined planet.
An arrowhead Pakak appeared at maximum range, and green tendrils reached out towards Stuona’s ship, the stars moved rapidly across the screen as she manoeuvred to avoid the deadly bolts, then one hit, a glancing, momentary blow, and the image wavered. “Cut all power!” she screamed. “Let them think we are finished.” The Pakak closed in for the kill. A larger ship, one of the Warrnam, shaped like a monstrous bullet, moved up from behind, flashing a couple of erratic green bolts warningly across the vacuum just beyond the pointed front of the Pakak, and the arrowhead craft stopped dead in its tracks.
“A bigger one,” Stuona’s voice murmured savagely. “All the better. GIVE ME ALL AVAILABLE POWER NOW!” Suddenly the distance between the two craft dropped away, and purple bolts sizzled out across the cold emptiness, finding their target with satisfying speed. The Warrnam vanished in a blinding flash of light, then the image started to break up, static obscuring the stars.
“Give me just one, I can still–” Green tendrils flashed out from the Pakak, and a moment later the image disappeared entirely.
Richard and Kirrina found themselves leaning forwards in their seats, gripping the arm-rests on their chairs tightly. They stared at the remnant of Arshonna that still hung like a monstrous burned rose-bud a few yards in front of their ship.
Paranak stood up and spoke with great dignity and a hint of repressed anger. “This time I must die, for now I know the truth about my people, how they destroyed without warning, how they killed without reason, how they took away the home of your ancestors without honour and without purpose.” He knelt and leaned back in the ceremonial position of surrender that Kirrina knew so well. “Make it slow and painful, for perhaps my honour may lift a little of the stain which now marks all Narlavs.”
Richard looked at Kirrina uncertainly. He could sense a huge change in her; gone was the emotionless state she had been in since their discovery of the destruction of Arshonna, gone was the barrier that had stone-walled all his attempts to reach her. In her eyes blazed an anger that Richard somehow sensed could destroy his mind, if it were so directed. He watched as she turned to the defenceless Paranak.
“How could I destroy you,” she said softly, her voice infinitely sad as she smiled faintly at the only Narlav she had ever met. “You have spared my life, and you have saved it. No, my blood-brother, I will never willingly harm you.”
Paranak stared at her in amazement, his eye space deeply furrowed.
Kirrina activated the Drive and started to move their Patrol Craft back, away from the last fragment of her parents’ home planet, away from the unknown woman’s tomb. “Let’s go somewhere else – anywhere – I don’t want to be reminded–”
“Long range scanners indicate three groups of ships are cruising within the system,” Richard announced breathlessly as he spotted the alarm bursting into action on Paranak’s display and leaned over it to check it out. “There are eight ships in total; each group is quite widely spaced and the nearest is nearly seven light minutes away.”
Kirrina turned to Richard, then studied her own display carefully. “They must be trying to check the entire system as quickly as possible; they are moving quite fast.” Her eyes started to gleam. “The closest set of two is four light minutes from the next group of four. Even the furthest two-some is nearly three light minutes beyond the middle group.”
The alien stood up uncertainly, then laid down on his incliner and started a Drive signature analysis.
“Don’t bother; we’ll do it visually,” Kirrina stated crisply, discerning his intent with casual keenness. “They don’t know we are here, do they? We just stepped out from our little hiding place behind this ‘Arshonnan memorial’, and they have allowed their formation to spread out a little too much for their own good.”
Richard caught her idea easily, and he shivered. “I am activating the N-beam; Paranak, make sure the Shell Fields are at maximum. Proceed with micro-shift when ready.” We’ll either be heroes or vapour in a few minutes! He shrugged, feeling a sense of unreality pervading his mind. “Let’s go!”
Kirrina activated the Drive for a few micro-seconds, and the stars flickered briefly. Two Pakak sprang into existence just a mile or so ahead of them, closing on their position with startling speed. Their flight was angled enough to one side for Richard to be reminded of how the first one had looked from the viewer in the Moss Room within Citadel.
He worked the Negatruction Control Sphere and the purple beams shot out, contacting both ships with a narrow wedge of destructive energy and writhing along their straight-edged sides with a caress of death. The Pakak blossomed into incandescent flowers, just seconds later, or so it seemed to him as his adrenaline flooded through his veins.
Kirrina jumped them again, this time into the path of a close formation of four Narlav ships, two Pakak, two Warrnam, approaching from the same side. Expecting this, Richard had activated another N-beam system and grabbed the purple Control Sphere with his free hand. Somehow he managed to operate two weapons systems simultaneously, and the alien craft went off like well-timed fireworks; only the last one managed to fire a couple of very irregular green bolts in their general direction before it was sent to oblivion.
“Last ones!” Kirrina announced fiercely as the stars flickered again.
Richard found the last two Pakak positioned on either side of their Patrol Craft and accelerating away from them as they burst back into normal space, Citadel-Patrol Craft One’s position being somewhat less than optimal after the third successive micro-jump. Both managed to direct their N-beams back at his ship as he paused to refocus on them, and he gasped as the impacts shook their hybrid Craft and caused the Control Centre lights to flicker. He kept the weapons operating, somehow, and the penultimate Pakak exploded like a hot spotlight hit by water, apparently throwing them back, even further away from the other.
Something alarmed, indicating that their outermost two Shells were down, and Richard concentrated his fire-power on the remaining enemy craft as its momentum caused it to continue to race away, green bolts peppering their Shell Fields and shaking their ship in return. The intervening area was highly charged now, scattering much of the destructiveness of both attacks off to dissipate harmlessly in the indifferent vacuum of space, but he continued regardless, determined to beat the Narlavs in a battle of sheer muscle.
“They are activating their Star Drive!” Kirrina cried as the Pakak started to shimmer, but Paranak suddenly moved from his statuesque pose, reached forward, and, grabbing one of the Negatruction Control Spheres from Richard with his incredibly long arm, played the purple energy across the wide tail of the Pakak with a rapid, scything motion.
The ship started to flare up, but the flash dimmed after a fraction of a second, and Kirrina screamed as the stars seemed to move inwards around the blankness that had formed. She programed another hasty micro-jump, and …
Richard found that he was staring at blank displays. After a period of confusion, he recalled the last image he had seen, of stars moving inwards, and then sideways. He looked right, and saw that Kirrina was just lifting her head.
“Are you…?” he began, and as he touched her cheek, he received the answer:
I remember the stars, too. She turned and looked at him, her blue eyes wide, her expression one of fearful puzzlement.
“You must have done the jump in time to avoid – whatever that was.” Once Richard could see she was at least as lucid as he, he turned to check on Paranak. The Narlav was still unconscious, but seemed to be breathing normally.
&nb
sp; “I’m trying to get the viewscreen back up.” Kirrina announced. “How long were we ‘out’?”
“I’m just checking that.” Richard reviewed the autolog and found the answer. “Looks like a little more than forty four minutes.”
“There!’ Kirrina whispered cautiously.
The stars seemed to fade into view on the blank surface in front of them. She checked and found that their Patrol Craft had returned to normal space at the edge of the gas giant planet zone of the system, within visual range of a blue-green, slightly indistinct form - the innermost of the gas giants – its apparent size that of a tennis ball at the other end of a long dining table.
This had been the destination of her micro-jump – she sighed in relief: Whatever it was, we got away in time!
“Good move!” Richard whispered, uncertain of what had occurred, but sure that Kirrina’s quick action had saved them from an awful fate. He looked over at his pilot fiancée and saw her uncertainty answer his next, unuttered question. He turned back to Paranak in time to see the blocky head rising from the couch-like surface at last. The Narlav seemed to have some difficulty focusing, until he slapped the side of his own head forcefully.
The sound of the slap caused Kirrina to jump, and she turned quickly to determine the source of the unexpected percussion. She made eye-contact with her blood-brother, deduced the sequence of events, and found herself smiling for a moment at the novelty of the medical technique he had employed. Paranak missed this, his eye-space was deeply furrowed, and his attention was on the now quite distant system star.
“We should be seeing the moment of our departure any second now.” Richard commented, having figured out the distance they had travelled, and the time light from their final battle would have taken to reach their current location.
“I can’t detect the ships – our own vessel or the final Pakak;” Paranak announced. “There’s too much interference from N-beam scatter. I –” His speech ceased as the viewscreen flickered, drawing his attention again.
They watched in horror as the system star started to waver, as a candle in a draft, and then it dimmed slowly until the once bright stellar centre-point became a dull orange blob.
“What happened?” Richard asked, his voice full of dread, after a full minute of silence.
Kirrina swallowed. “The partially activated Star Drive must have overloaded as it reacted with the N-beam… some incredible, unimaginable interlocking reaction… to produce an energy ‘sink’ of immense proportions, something which was so potent it could absorb the output of Arshonna’s sun for a short time.”
“Like a black hole…” Richard murmured, aghast. He turned to Paranak and reached out his right hand. “You helped us destroy them,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “Your own people.”
Paranak swivelled to face him. “You are my Captain; I cannot allow my own ship to be destroyed by the complacent Narlavs from Kontar! Besides, they deserved to die; they had allowed their formation to spread out too much, and what were their gunners doing, sleeping? There was only one response from the first six ships! I find it difficult to believe that such incompetence is possible!”
Richard chuckled in relief at his strange friend’s unique approach to honour, and to life generally. “Well said!” He slapped the Narlav as hard as he could on the side of his green-grey head.
Paranak swivelled back, concentrating once more on his responsibilities, and looked down at his monitors hastily. “There are no other ships registering on our scanners.”
“At least there won’t be any reinforcements coming,” Richard commented with feeling. “No one is left to report the battle.”
Kirrina put her hands on her lap and then squeezed them between her knees in an effort to stop them from shaking. “Maybe they will be scared off by the unexplained destruction or loss of so many of their ships.”
“As we have been, in turn, by the close-call we had,” Richard replied softly. “That’s quite the genocidal grave-marker we’ve left.” A thought came suddenly into his mind, and he scanned the system for planetary bodies. “Puima is gone.” This was the innermost of the Arshonnan system planets. “And I can’t detect the fragment of Arshonna we visited. It must also have been caught up in the intense gravity fields created when that last Pakak went up. We could have been, too. In any case, it is gone forever now.”
Kirrina nodded, her shakes subsiding gradually as she contemplated the messenger they had discovered, such a short time earlier. “We will remember her.”
It seemed a more fitting end for the body of that forever-nameless Arshonnan that they had left so hastily in the ruined corridor. The woman could rest in peace now; she had finally delivered her message. After the many hundreds of cold years of ‘waiting’ for the anticipated help that she had so desperately hoped would arrive in time to save both her, and her beloved planet, someone had found her at last, and set her free.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Warriors… sharpen your swords! – Jarkader
“The building is secure!” An anonymous voice from the far end of the hangar proclaimed.
“Okay, take the cover off,” Ed Baynes commanded as the echoes died away.
Several army engineers scurried around the elongated, dome-shaped structure and pulled the heavy tarpaulins off one at a time. Once this process was started, the covers seemed to fall away of their own accord, leaving the gleaming, polished aluminium shell of the prototype ‘Earth DEfender Mark One’ sparkling under the bright lights of the spacious hangar. The surface of EDEM 1 was entirely smooth, and apart from the dark, circular opening which occupied the centre of the facing side, almost totally without features. The front end was equipped with several small windows, but the interior was dark enough that no details could be discerned.
“It was definitely worth it, coming up here to see this,” Terry breathed in excitement, running his hand through his light brown hair. “Despite the awful weather.”
Latt looked critically at the sixty-foot long, egg-shaped structure as he had several times in the past few weeks. “Of course the power ssource that is intended for flight-testing this craft is still being tested down in Nevada; they were up to four percent of predicted capacity as of Friday evening.”
“Yeah, I heard.” Terry responded. “I had hoped to see ‘Zac, but I understand he’s been down there for several weeks now, trying to speed things up a little so this ‘EDEM 1’ might fly before summer.”
“Most of the fittings required for flight are already installed.” Ed walked up to the four-foot diameter circular opening in the starboard side of the structure and turned back to them. “Why don’t you show Terry the insides, Latt?” He turned towards his valued sponsor without waiting for a reply from his resident alien. “Our team of scientists say they have a partial overlap of gravity fields developed, maybe as much as fifteen percent.”
“That’s worse than useless,” Latt interjected angrily. “This sstructure would never withstand such forces; it would be torn apart. And any humans inside, well…” he shuddered.
Ed shook his head, his pitted face showing his understanding of this hazard. “So I heard. One of the scientists was a little impetuous. He put a stray cat in here and ran up the inducers to thirty percent of capacity. It took our clean-up crew over five hours to remove the remains afterwards.”
Latt and Terry exchanged horrified glances. Latt finally hunched over and climbed inside, beckoning his friend to follow. He stepped onto the sheet metal floor and moved to one side, ending up beside the aeroplane-like exterior door where it hung inside the airlock. This was a space with walls that were curved away from the exterior, allowing room for several people to enter at once. The far end of this space was penetrated by another four foot diameter, circular opening. The door that normally filled this space was also swung inwards, and hung inside the craft, as it was required to when not in the closed position.
The two friends stepped over the lower lip of the inner door. The reactor from Wonderlo
af sat a little forlornly in the rear portion of the ship, the space being more than generous for it. They turned forwards, away from the reactor.
There, sitting to the right and about twenty feet ahead of the entry point, in two heavily-padded reclining seats facing the forward windows, were two men dressed in high-altitude flight suits and wearing close-fitting helmets. At the sound of the entry of Latt and Terry, both turned and looked around the sides of the chairs, revealing that they were wearing full-face gas masks.
Terry looked startled until one removed his mask and helmet, exposing his short, curly brown hair and friendly face.
“Hi,” Harold Morton began with a big grin. “Remember me?”
As Terry burst out laughing, the other ‘pilot’ took off his mask, revealing himself to be none other than Leroy Fraser.
Latt, a little bewildered, looked from Terry’s amusement back to the performing pilot and his conspiratorial companion, then his own grin started to show.
“The guys thought you needed something to perk you up this morning,” Ed explained as he climbed in behind them and slicked back his black hair absently. “And don’t worry, the Inducers are definitely off!”
“Jokes apart, Ed,” Terry began as his laugh lines started to fade away again. “How long will it be until this thing will fly? I will need to do some more corporate restructuring if you can’t demonstrate to ‘the big brass’ and get some substantial increases in funding before Fall.”
Ed sighed, aware of the sacrifices that Stadt had already made, then pointed back at the power supply from the Railcar, or Wonderloaf, bolted securely in the ample space behind the entry. “We have plenty of power right now, as we are using the reactor that you brought back from Mars, but Isaac’s brain-boys don’t seem to be making much progress with the Inducers. I can’t get a straight answer from them. That’s why I called this meeting. I spoke to Isaac yesterday, and he suggested that I involve Latt in the development once again, now he has provided the necessary input for the Eliminator reactor to be put back on schedule.”
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