Dalida: A Scifi Space Opera Adventure

by G. P. Eliot

  “Okay, and what does all of that mean?” Hank said.

  “It means that I’ve managed to locate the best way to get to that power source,” Ida said.

  The overhead screens flickered and was then replaced with a digital image of a sphere, with Serrano’s yellow, blue, and green power reading near the middle.

  “It’s in the center of the damn planet?” Hank said. “You’re right, no I don’t like that at all.” It’ll take a whole lot longer than eight hours to get there, he gritted his teeth. Did Ida know that he was counting the hours for Lory? He wondered.

  “Not only that, sir, but the best and quickest route appears to be through quadrant sector 34’03, 19’72.” A small green vector swooped in to highlight one part of the planet below helpfully.

  “Magnify,” Hank muttered.

  The image was picked out in digital color, showing the relief of rocks and hills and gorges, but nothing that Hank could make out as particularly threatening. At the bottom of one of the gorges appeared to be a set of tunnels that shot downwards towards the planet’s core.

  “Nothing here appears to be that dangerous,” Hank muttered. Apart from the time it was going to take to climb down those tunnels. He wondered if he could even use one of the shuttles…

  “Now let me overlay Dalida’s surface-capture,” Ida said cheerfully, and the image was washed with real color. Everyone on the Bridge saw the grey and brown rocks of the dead planet, and the steaming, bubbling goo that filled all of the gorges below.

  “Ah,” Serrano went into action, his hands flickering through the holo controls. “It appears to be a natural substance. High concentrations of sulfur and phosphate.”

  “English, please,” Hank growled at everyone.

  “It’ll burn your face off,” Serrano said, “or any bit of human tissue.”

  “Well–we’re going to be wearing our suits, right?” Hank shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”

  Serrano cleared his throat. “Looking at the levels of concentration in the scans, that mixture will eat through even the protective layers of our environmental suit in less time it takes to get to the center of the planet and that power source.”

  Hank’s knuckles whitened as he curled his hands into fists. But he remembered to breathe. To let out all that frustration and anger.

  There had to be a way. There was always a way.

  “Well–the sulfur and whatever can’t go all the way through the planet, can it? It has to end somewhere…” he looked at the different images again. A series of tunnels and shafts that extended down, a hundred or so meters more before the Dalida and Ida’s combined sensors failed.

  “You know what,” he said to his crew. “Some of those tunnels are big enough to drive a shuttle through.”

  “But there’s no way of telling if they join up, sir!” Serrano pointed out. “Or if those tunnels will lead us to the energy source!”

  Hank looked up at the overhead holo-timer.

  Seven and a half hours.

  “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to roll the dice and hope that luck is on our side!” He said, before snapping. “Suit up!”

  25

  “Boss, you know I have the utmost care and admiration for you, right?” said Ida on their private channel.

  Hank narrowed his eyes. “I know what you’re about to say, and I know precisely what I am doing,” he said as he plunged the Dalida’s shuttle straight for the deep pool of bubbling yellow acid.

  “Okay! Just checking.” Ida said. For once, she managed to hold her tongue. Usually she would have offered tactical or strategic directions, Hank knew. It was something to do with her base programming when she was his personal military A.I. Hank guessed that her newfound discretion must have meant that she was evolving.

  “Sir?” it was Steed, sitting behind him in the shuttle and sounding fraught.

  “I get it. Acid. Burning. Screaming.” Hank said as he only added more thrust to the engines.

  The small shuttle shot down through the thin veil of gasses that counted as the mysterious planet’s atmosphere, straight for the area of grey rocky highland. Gusts and drifts of yellowish steam were rising from the pools and gorges. But Hank had already selected the largest of the rents in the earth to aim for, and he had the Ida-Dalida scanning image of the tunnels below superimposed.

  The sea of acid grew larger and larger in their screen, until it almost filled it from edge to edge.

  “This shuttle has poly-steel layers and reinforced bulkheads. We’ll make it through,” he announced.

  The Captain hoped that it was true, as the shuttle hit the acid like a bullet.

  Many hundreds of thousands of light years away, and the double agent Ryan slurred his words.

  “Lory…? She’s my friend. No. She’s not my friend…” the man gagged and coughed. A thin dribble of spit fell from his lips to land on his lap.

  The Jackal straightened up suddenly, a look of disgust on his face. He despised weakness in an almost visceral fashion. It made him want to slap the agent where he sat, for allowing himself to get into such a state.

  Why, oh why, do I have to work with such amateurs? The man thought, turning to raise an eyebrow at Doctor Vaas. He didn’t have to say anything for Vaas to suddenly flush and look uncomfortable.

  “Technically, sir, the interrogation technique is working, we are getting the subject to talk…” Vaas said a little pathetically.

  More weak-willed people, the Jackal could have slapped the Doctor, as well. But he restrained himself. So far, introducing pain to the double agent had only made him cry like a baby. Some people were like that. They didn’t have any backbone. The Jackal wondered how under all of the stars of heaven, this ‘Ryan’ had been chosen for such an important Union mission.

  Another reason why the Union was in such a state.

  “This technique appears to turn him into a vegetable,” the Jackal considered, turning back around once again to consider his hostage.

  Ryan had been separated from Lory and each placed in their own interrogation rooms. Each was exactly the same as the other, but only Ryan’s had been activated. The Jackal’s pulse quickened a little when he considered the questioning that he would put Lory Cox under. From all of the assessments and confidential files that he had read about her, she had an outsider, type-A personality. That meant that she was going to be a tough cookie to crack!

  The Jackal liked those.

  “Lory? Are you there?” slurred Ryan again, bringing the Jackal’s attention back to the present day. He sat in the chair with one of Doctor Vaas’ contraptions attached to his head. It looked like a crown made of metal spiders. There were points that skewered into the dome of the man’s cranium–and not all of them where the electro-nerve stimulators or medical injectors which was keeping Ryan–somewhat–conscious.

  The Jackal was sure that some of them were just metal pins added by Vaas just because he liked seeing people squirm.

  “The sedatives and suppressants that the man was given were indeed powerful, but my Cerebellum-Neuro-Stimulator is managing to counteract them.” Vaas said a little warily. He flinched when the Jackal made any sudden movements. “The man is in an induced state of labile consciousness.”

  “What?” the Jackal snapped at him. Vaas flinched.

  “It means that he is almost hypnotized, sir,” the Doctor said quickly.

  “Then tell me what was in the Message!” the Jackal couldn’t take it anymore. He turned and shouted at the agent.

  “The Message?” Ryan looked confused, as if he were searching for a memory that had been irretrievably lost. “I was working as a guard. But I wasn’t really a guard, was I? I was an undercover agent for the Union. No, the Shimming Path….or was it really the Union?” Ryan frowned and managed to look even more puzzled than he already did.

  “I can’t remember who I was supposed to be,” he said mournfully. “There are just so many of them. Mes..I mean…”

  “This man is an idiot.” The Jac
kal stated, turning on his heel suddenly–making Doctor Vaas flinch–and marching towards the equipment at the side of the room.

  “I am sure that, given more time, sir…” Vaas attempted.

  “I’m all out of time and patience, Doctor.” The Jackal turned and discharged the laser pistol he had picked up straight into Ryan’s chest.

  “Uh–Ah–I mean…” Vaas gulped, his eyes round.

  The Jackal enjoyed the moment of terror from the Doctor.

  Perhaps this will be a reminder to him that I am a man who expects results.

  But then the Jackal calmly checked the still-smoking pistol, flicked off the charge and slipped it into his belt. “There. Now we don’t have to listen to that man blubbing any more, do we? When will Miss Cox be available for treatment?”

  “Uh, she had far more sedatives in her system, sir. Another few hours, yet,” Vaas said, and this time didn’t dare raise his eyes from the ground.

  Good, the Jackal thought. The Doctor must have realized that if his ‘techniques’ failed on Lory Cox as well, then the Jackal really had very little need to carry him around on his ship.

  But they still had the trace on the Dalida, after all; the Jackal tried to cheer himself up as he left the interrogation room and made his way to the Pequod’s Bridge. He left Doctor Vaas with the business of trying to clear up the mess. He was a doctor after all, right?

  But at least the Dalida was a Union ship.

  That meant that it had Union sub-space codes. The Jackal didn’t know where the Dalida was going, but he could follow the unique subspace trail that they left behind when they engaged their Faster-Than-Light drive.

  If he knew the sub-space codes, that was.

  And only someone with a high enough Union rank and special jurisdiction could access them.

  “Bridge?” he tapped his suit’s in-built intercom. “Ready the FTL drive!”

  26

  The shuttle plunged through the lake of acid. Immediately, it seemed as though every alarm that the small metal box had went off all at once.

  “Forward Shields taking damage.”

  “R and L side Shields taking damage.”

  “Rear Shields taking damage.”

  Ahead of them on the viewing screen, all that Hank could see was a green, viscous sort of murk.

  “Ida–pull the overlay. Now.” Hank muttered, and as she was connected with Hank’s suit, the shuttle, and the Dalida, she accessed the controls to create a digital hexagram image over the murk. It showed steep and narrowing rocky walls on either side of them.

  And it only extended some two hundred meters ahead of them. “Can you get any better range on that?” Hank asked.

  Ida’s icon blinked and flashed several times as it tried to process the request, before her voice came back, annoyed. “There’s still something really strange going on with this planet. It’s like it’s running an interference field–but of course, that can’t be right can it?”

  “Explain.” Hank said as he kept his eyes on the rocky walls. And the Shield Indicators. The walls were narrowing, and the shields were now flashing a warning orange. The shuttle was having to expend a large amount of energy attempting to maintain them against the constant chemical reaction of the acid.

  At least the forward scan stayed at two hundred meters ahead at all times–it was clearly working, but only at a fraction of what it was capable of.

  “All of the sensors are working perfectly, but it just seems as though they get about two hundred meters out and suddenly, they diffuse.” Ida complained.

  “Just like the sensors on the Dalida, as well,” Hank said.

  “If I didn’t know better, boss–I’d say that someone was targeting all attempts at a scan and running a jamming pattern.” Ida guessed.

  “Well, there is a massive power source down there somewhere,” Hank said. “And it’s not the planetary core, according to Serrano and Cortez. Anyone could be there, using it to power anything…” he switched over to the public channels of the suit to shuttle intercom. “Team? Load up. I want us ready to rock and roll as soon as we’re out of the gate: Ida thinks that we might be up against someone with a sophisticated jamming technology.”

  “Someone or something,” Madigan muttered from behind.

  “Remember,” Hank called out. “repeat after me: We come in peace.”

  He could hear Madigan’s frown in the big man’s voice as he said, “In my book that usually translates as ‘we come in pieces’”

  “And just how many aliens have you met, big guy?” Steed attempted to lighten the situation.

  Hank was only half listening, his eyes focused on the short-lived scan ahead. He didn’t want to admit this to the others–but this was one of the toughest stunts he’d yet pulled off. He had to keep the shuttle moving fast enough so that the acid didn’t completely eat them up–but any faster and he would miss any features that arrived, with only two hundred meters warning.

  And shuttles could go fast when they wanted to. Very fast. They could cover two hundred meters in a matter of seconds if Hank had wanted to open her engines up.

  “Forward Shields at critical.” The ship’s computer flashed red.

  “Proximity!” Ida said with a lot more emphasis than the computer had.

  The hexagram picture ahead of them was suddenly showing a wide jagged spur of rock projecting right across their path.

  They were going to hit it.

  Hank had to choose. Over or under?

  Under. He pushed the flight sticks down, just in time as the green murk revealed the huge, dark shadow of rock ahead of them. He saw the convolutions in the rock in hideous clarity, just a heartbeat before they were swimming underneath it, and coming up the other side.

  “Forward shields down. Prow taking damage.” The ship bleeped in a voice that was maddeningly calm.

  Suddenly, the forward view screen misted white as the acid started to reach with the outer panels. What’s the density of that stuff? Hank was thinking. How long was it going to take the acid to eat through it, and then engulf them all in a tide of flesh-eating horror?

  Hank wished that Serrano was here. And then he thought that he probably shouldn’t have been so hard on him. Scientists do have their uses, after all.

  “Slowing by zero point eight,” Hank announced. He didn’t have an engine crew here, but it was an old habit. As was making stupid decisions and thinking that they were good ones–like diving through a lake of acid.

  The viewing plate was now just a whitened haze. It was impossible to see through. That meant that the Captain was relying on the forward scans alone. All damnable two hundred meters worth of it!

  This far down, and without the forward shields, the shuttle was starting to warm up inside. The walls of the gorge had narrowed until it was only a few shuttles’ widths either side of them.

  “Boss!” Ida called.

  The inevitable had happened. Another section of rock rose to meet them, dead center. It turned the tunnel that they were flying through into a choice of two passageways, right and left.

  “Go right, boss!” Ida said.

  Hank did. He pulled on the flight control sticks to swerve them up and into the right-hand tunnel. It narrowed for a moment, and Hank was certain that Ida had made a mistake–before the tunnel suddenly widened out into a much wider chasm.

  “Ida, you genius–how did you know?” Hank asked.

  “Water flow. Or acid flow, would be more appropriate. There was a downward current from this direction,” she sounded immensely pleased with herself.

  The shuttle powered through the middle of the vast gulf, and Hank even added that zero point eight propulsion back in to give them a bit of a kick. “Are we close? We must be close!” Hank was calling out.

  “R and L side shields down. Shuttle taking damage.” The computer chimed.

  “Impossible to tell, fly-boy,” Ida said worriedly. “Our scans extend only a little way ahead and back. We’ve totally lost contact with the Dalida.”
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  Great, Hank thought, as the bottom of the chasm appeared ahead of them. There were four openings in the rock wall, but only one was directed straight ahead, down into the planet’s core itself.

  “Here goes nothing,” Hank said, and pushed the fizzing shuttle straight through, as fast as he dared.