Star Thief

by T. Jackson King

  “Appreciation is expressed. However I have no gravity projector to remove the rock that covers the tube. Can you five beings accomplish that? And how will you transport the tube?”

  I looked around to my crew beings. All four of them gave me signs of being willing to clear the tube. I looked back to where Quantum had spoken.

  “Yes, Quantum, we can remove the rock. And you will see there is a long flat table atop the back of the segmented being. That is a floater pad. It can transport the tube.”

  A low hum echoed through the air. “Can it also transport the power unit which supports the tube?”

  I looked at the upper end of the stasis tube. The black metal of the support partly curved up the sides of tube. Clearly the black metal block under the tube was intended to support the tube. Its surface glittered with light sparkles that suggested it was powered up. And now we knew it was indeed a power source.

  “I think so. Let us clear the rock away. Then we can try lifting both the tube and the block onto the floater pad.”

  “Good. I have no need of that power source. I have my own power unit that energizes my memory core.”

  Nodding within my helmet, I reached out and began removing rocks. My crew beings spread around the tube and began removing rocks. “What kind of power unit serves the tube?”

  “It is a zero-point energy power unit that taps the quantum energy of the vacuum fields in the universe. Your species calls this Dark Energy. The Harl use such units to power their star vessels and to energize their gravity projectors and antimatter beamers.”

  Shock hit me. If we got this power unit back into the Akantha, perhaps we could tap into antimatter. Or at least make the gravity projector as strong as the one used by Stars to force our landing. And could this zero-point power unit be what was creating the star-level energy glow associated with each Primary? My sudden hope plummeted as I realized Draken would have told me if the unit was that powerful. Instead it was the graviton source the worm had detected from up above. Powerful enough but not equal to a small star’s energy. Well, even if it took several trips with the floater pad, the Harl in the tube and the four meter long power unit were going inside my shuttle! I just hoped the memory core of Quantum and its power unit would also fit. No matter. My career doing alien archaeology had long ago taught me how to cram everything vital into a too small space!

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sharp Claw did not like the idea of sharing the shuttle Icarus with a Harl, even if the being was a dead corpse. Just looking at the preserved body as they rose up the gravlift to the ground level made her shiver. Instinct told her to either blast it with her plasma pistol or to run. Run fast and far away from such a giant predator. And likely a carnivore, judging by its fanged teeth. It was a relief when the gravlift entry spiraled open and she could jump out and into the circular chamber of the tower. Ignoring the wall carvings she aimed her pistol and magrail rifle forward and scanned the chamber. Mechbots could have entered since they had left. Or even local predator animals like the dogon. Nothing. She adjusted her vision from infrared focus up to normal white-yellow light that matched what her shoulder suit lights were providing. She turned right and headed for the archway that led to the entry hole they had vaporized in the tower’s rock wall.

  “Team, let’s go!” called out Captain Vitades as Claw exited the blasted entry and saw it was early afternoon. Strange how time moved so quickly when one explored ruins with the chance of deadly danger.

  “At last!” chirped Flow, spreading her wings wide. The clear film of her enviro-suit spread out with her wings, giving her a gossamer shimmer that Claw liked.

  “It is a relief to be out of that cave,” chittered Meander as the brown insect leaned forward on her four legs and headed for the Icarus and the ramp leading up to its airlock. The Akantha’s Astrogator touched the gravity band that clung to the juncture of her thorax and abdomen. “Even better is this lower gravity. It feels almost like home!”

  Claw looked to the rear. Draken said nothing even though he too wore a gravity band about his central segment. Of course he was used to heavy gravity. He balanced the tube with the Harl on his back while pulling the floater pad with its black metal energy block. It was clear he would have to make a return trip to load up the memory core of Quantum Entanglement and its separate power source. It was going to be crowded inside the shuttle. She turned around and followed the captain up the ramp. It would be good to see her own cabin inside the Akantha. There were wall holos of her home world, a pit full of warm sand for sleeping and a snack unit that provided imitation ground crawlers for when she felt the urge to eat. Sadly the crawlers did not move like the live prey she was used to eating. The live crawlers were raised commercially on her home world. Her Notem people still ate live prey, no matter what some alien species thought. Protein was protein, and even tastier when you had to chase it!

  Draken clambered up onto four of the seat pads that lined each side of the shuttle. Meander and Sharp Claw sat opposite him. The central walkway between them was filled with the Harl tube, its energy block, a green globular crystal which was Quantum’s memory core and finally the AI’s energy block, which was more square than long. Its center was depressed. Clearly it was designed to allow the globe to rest in the depression. There were no power cables or sockets to be seen on the block’s surface. Which meant its power had to flow through electromagnetic induction into the green crystal. Charging of devices by way of inducing an EM field in a nearby copper coil was ancient tech. Since there were no copper windings showing on the crystal it must use a different tech to receive the energy transmissions. Whatever the method, he felt the gravitons pulsing from both energy blocks. The gravity waves were a side effect of the block operation, in view of the tapping of zero-point energy. While not as strong as the gravitons, quarks, hadrons and neutrinos emitted by each of the Primaries, still, each block was a powerful energy source. He laid back against the shuttle’s inner hull and absorbed the graviton pulsations from both blocks. It felt delicious.

  “We’re departing,” called Captain Vitades from the pilot chamber where he sat with Flow.

  A redundant statement. The vibration of the shuttle’s hydrogen pulse jets could be felt by anyone in contact with any surface of the shuttle. Still, it was the captain’s way to state the obvious. Four cycles past he had learned this slender biped mammal felt stating the obvious was his way of including his crew beings in the facts of each exploration trip. While puzzling to Draken since all Woomba could sense every EM field and every subatomic particle emitted anywhere within a planetary diameter, he appreciated the poorly balanced mammal’s effort to make the crew part of his ‘family’. That aspect of life was common to all intelligent species, no matter their form, their number of legs or their evolutionary history. No species made it into space without a culture that valued family. And judging from the imagery he had seen on the Harl bas-reliefs, they too had ‘family’ of a sort. It would be interesting to see what physical differences the male and female Harl possessed. Perhaps a future exploration would answer that question, if they found more statues or even live Harl.

  Lotan watched as the shuttle Icarus came down to the black stone plaza, its jets flaring, then pulsing sideways as the craft slipped into the open hangar of the Akantha. The hangar that contained the shuttle and several dozen sensorbots and spybots occupied most of the middle of the Tessene vessel. The other side of the vessel’s midbody held the main airlock and its unfolding ramp. He followed the holo image in front of him as he walked down the central hallway toward the hangar. The image was a service of Akantha. His efforts to become the AI’s friend had gone nowhere. It had refused his request for a mind touch implant ‘just in case’ of some future emergency. And the employer Laserta had said nothing from her place somewhere inside the Harl vessel a short distance from the Akantha.

  He reached out, touched the center of the portal that gave access to the hangar, then entered a small room that held physical controls for hangar gravit
y, air supply, lighting and the operation of the hangar hull entry. He watched as the shuttle slid into the hangar, extruded three landing struts, then settled onto the metal floor of the hangar. The pulse jet shut off. Its exhaust became mist that exited through the open hangar entry. In moments the shuttle’s midbody ramp unfolded downward, followed by the airlock portal sliding open. As usual Sharp Claw bounded out and down the ramp, her weapons aimed at the empty hangar. He stepped through the automatic spiral door and headed for the ramp, Claw, the other crew beings and the captain. He was eager to see the preserved body of a Harl that the captain had found in the research station.

  “Lotan!” called Vitades as he pushed up his enviro-suit’s visor in apparent eagerness to breath natural air. “Is the employer aboard ship?”

  “She is not,” he clicked amidst a wave of pheromone comments. “Where is the Harl?”

  “Still inside the shuttle,” Vitades said in his flowing language. He gestured rearward. “Draken will bring it out once our crewmates have exited. Do you have the floater pad ready?”

  Lotan nodded in the Human body gesture that meant concurrence. “I do.” He pointed at the pad that floated just outside the controls office, suspended on magnetic repulsion fields. “Shall I bring it to you?”

  “Yes, please,” the captain said as he reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped to one side.

  Flow and Meander moved aside to join Sharp Claw. All three wore personal gravity bands, like he did. The green bands had become very convenient. It was pleasant to feel the natural gravity of his home world wherever he went inside the Akantha, rather than just inside his cabin. He grabbed the metal fiber rope attached to the floater pad and pulled it with him as he approached the captain.

  “Surely the Harl tube does not require a floater pad,” he clicked quickly, looking up at the open airlock entry.

  “It does not,” the captain said. “It is light enough to be carried by Draken. Who is bringing it down.”

  Draken now exited the shuttle. Attached to his back was a long glassine tube wider than the being’s armor-plated body. The tube was as long as Draken. Who stopped at the foot of the ramp. The captain gestured to the six-legged being and then looked to Lotan.

  “Lotan, as we arrived above this city, the Harl AI Quantum Entanglement made mind touch with the city’s seven Primaries. I asked Quantum to tell Stars That Beckon about the Harl body and that I would quickly return it to their custody. Hence the floater pad you brought.”

  Lotan swallowed hard as he took in the black-furred body of the massive Harl. The white fur stripes that lined its face focused one’s attention on its closed eyes and tooth-filled mouth. Its clawed hands rested at its side. Its claw feet touched the bottom of the tube. The spider-web crack that had destroyed the stasis function of the tube was bright in the light of the hangar. He watched as Draken shrugged off the tube onto the floater pad, where he pulled tie-down straps over the tube so it would not fall off the pad. Briefly he was amused by the low tech straps being combined with the high tech of the magfield repulsor of the pad.

  “Lotan, take the tube out of the Akantha and down to the tower of Stars That Beckon,” the captain ordered. “I suspect she is impatient to see her Harl.”

  Irritation touched him. Transporting the tube to the tower was something a mechbot could easily do. Either the repair mechbot or the attack mechbot given them by Stars could easily pull the pad’s rope and convey it to the tower AI. Then he realized he would have all that time to view closely something that no one off this planet had ever seen. The body of a Harl in all its magnificent ferocity now lay before him. As he transported it he could make calculations as to how to influence a living Harl, if they ever met one in the future. He grabbed the rope and met the amber eyes of the captain.

  “Happily will I transport this Harl to the presence of Stars That Beckon,” he said, having no doubt that the tower AI was watching everything now happening by way of its mind touch with Akantha. The Primary had regularly communicated with the Akantha AI as its bots completed the installation of the gravity projector and finished installing the control lines to a new control panel in the Control Chamber of the Akantha. The sensors had been upgraded also. As had the magfield drive. He had convinced Akantha to do a test of the new drive to see if it could really lift them in this world’s nine-tenths gee gravity. The magfield drive had been a marvel, lifting them up several kilometers before Akantha reversed field polarity and landed the ship on the plaza. The Tessene vessel was now a far more powerful vessel than when it had exited the Gate at the outer edge of this star system.

  “Good,” the captain said, turning back to watch as Draken went up the ramp. “We will offload Quantum and her power unit, then the power unit that supported the stasis tube. I hope Stars can help us integrate the extra energy block into the Akantha’s power distribution.”

  Lotan left the captain and headed for the hangar’s oversized exit portal. The floater pad with its four meter long tube could fit through that entry, which gave access to the central hallway. On the other side of the hallway lay the large portal which gave access to the midbody airlock. The airlock lay directly opposite the hangar. He set about using the hangar cargo portal. Even as his hands did the simple portal activation, which Akantha could have done for him, he scanned the preserved body of the Harl. Once in the hallway he pulled a sampling tube from his waist pocket, stuck it through the spider-web crack, pushed it down until it entered the flesh of the Harl, then tapped its suction function. Small pieces of hair and flesh entered the tube. In seconds he withdrew it, stored it in his pocket and continued over to the airlock portal. The flesh sample would be worth a fortune to some empire that wished to do a DNA analysis of a Harl corpse. Whether such an empire would then try to regrow a Harl he did not care. Valuables that helped him and his people were what mattered.

  I grabbed the rope attached to the floater pad that carried Quantum and its power block. Looking around the very quiet hangar I noticed how closely Flow, Sharp Claw, Meander and Draken were watching me. Clearly they were wondering what to next do.

  “Your four, come with me. I’m taking Quantum over to the tower and I need a security escort in case any dogon show up.”

  Sharp Claw jumped to walk beside me, her slim hands holding her rifle and pistol. “Of course I will defend you, my captain,” she hissed.

  “We will also defend,” chittered Meander as the arthropod moved swiftly to flank my other side.

  “Following,” honked Draken.

  “I come, though I wish I could pilot in this world’s air more often,” chirped Flow as the avian turned her red beak toward me. She blinked her wide-set blue eyes. “Captain, will we soon leave this world?”

  “Maybe.” I headed for the hangar exit portal that Lotan had used three minutes earlier. “It depends on how long it will take to integrate the zero-point power block into our vessel’s power systems. I want our gravity projector to operate at full gravpull level. That will require feeding power from the zero-point block to it. And maybe its power will increase the beam strength of our x-ray, CO2, gamma ray and plasma weapons.”

  It will indeed increase the beam strength of our weapons.

  Akantha, thank you. And it is good to be home.

  Your mind is always at home in my mind.

  I touched the center of the hangar portal. It spiraled open. I pulled the floater pad after me as I stepped into the central hallway and moved to the far side. Reaching out I made to touch the airlock portal. It spiraled open before I touched it.

  Thanks again. But you know I like doing things myself.

  So I have observed over the four cycles of our association. It seems to be a Human thing.

  It is a Human thing.

  I breathed slow. And told my fast-beating heart to slow down. We were indeed close to leaving this world, in view of all the valuable tech we had been given and had obtained at the research station. But my prior exploration of Harl ruins had taught me the value of doing thing
s step by step. Rushing led to errors. Errors could kill or injure. And I had no wish for my crew to suffer injury, or worse. Especially in view of the fact we each now possessed personal gravity bands that were each worth a fortune. The crew would keep their bands of course. The five extra bands I had grabbed while inside Purple Glow would be unique trade or bribery items, in the future. Which now appeared very bright. Or would be bright once I returned Laserta to her home world with the vidlist of Gates and stars, her own gravband and whatever item she claimed under Employer’s Claim. My crewmates followed me into the midbody airlock. I headed for the outer airlock hatch as the inner one closed behind us. White-yellow daylight greeted us as Akantha opened the outer hatch. Reaching it I looked around the plaza. Purple Glow’s starship rested a hundred meters away. In front of us was the 43 level high tower of Stars. I stepped onto the ramp and headed down, pulling the floater pad along. Sharp Claw bounded past me.

  “Captain! Weapons should always precede you on any world!” she hissed sharply.

  I swallowed my grin. While she understood Human smiles were not an offensive show of predator teeth, still, she took her job very seriously. Showing humor at her dedication was not smart for me. Or for any other crew being in our crew. Claw was known to give a sharp bite to anyone who came too close to her while she was on patrol.

  “Thank you, Weapons. Please lead us to the tower.”

  “On patrol now!”

  My suit sound sensors picked up the movements of Draken, Flow and Meander as they followed the pad. I looked ahead at the interlocking black stones of Stars’ tower. There was no sign of Lotan. Clearly he had already passed inside. But we were not far behind him. It would be interesting to again see the three meter tall statue of the Harl that occupied the center of the ground level chamber, with its two ramps that led upward. Being with Stars was what Quantum had requested while we were still in the air, heading down to land on the plaza. Bringing the research site AI into the presence of a Primary AI was fine with me.