M'tak Ka'fek (The T'aafhal Inheritance)

by Doug Hoffman

  “Really?” said Jack.

  “Yeah, we passed through there on our way back from Gliese 581, after picking up the Triad Guardians. Nothing left but a degenerate matter object that must have erupted after we left the first time.”

  “Oh it erupted, Captain Vincent. That's how we ended up halfway across the Orion Arm. I'll have to tell you about it over dinner some time.”

  “Yes, a dining in, in the ward room so we can stop calling each other by rank,” added Ludmilla.

  “It's all right, Colonel. I still haven't gotten tired of being called captain.” Billy Ray smiled widely and Beth covertly elbowed him in the ribs.

  “All right newcomers, you might want to watch this, seeing how its your first time docking with the M'tak,” said Sandy from the flight deck. “It may look like we are going to collide with the ship but trust me, she'll be right.”

  Despite the warning, Beth and Billy Ray both gripped their chairs tightly as the shuttle slipped smoothly through the seemingly solid side of the larger spaceship. Unfazed, TK said, “now that's something. There's gotta be a million applications for that trick.”

  * * * * *

  Standing on the shuttle bay deck were Bobby, Mizuki and JT. The Captain's party marched down the shuttle's boarding ramp and halted at the bottom. An invisible boatswain's mate began piping 'Over the Side,' while Jack saluted JT, who was acting Officer of the Deck.

  “Request permission to come aboard, Sir.” Boarding a Navy ship, military personnel salute the colors and the OOD, before asking permission to board. The M'tak Ka'fek flew no colors, but tradition demanded that the question be asked and the OOD be called Sir, even by an admiral or the ship's captain.

  “Come aboard,” replied JT, returning Jack's salute. “Welcome back, Captain.” With boarding formalities observed, the two parties greeted each other with handshakes, hugs and broad smiles. Gretchen and JT exchanged pleasantries while invisible sparks flew between them. Before their enforced separation they had been lovers, if not actually in love. They were warrior buddies with benefits, and it looked like that arrangement would resume.

  “TK, you mentioned the selectively permeable hull opening,” Jack recalled. “The M'tak is a technological goldmine. In fact, I think you and Ludmilla will want to visit the medical section after the general tour and dinner.”

  “Yes, Jack. After reading your after action report I am most anxious to see the ship's sickbay. This wondrous ship holds the promise of so many advances in the future, and not just in warfare. It will revolutionize healthcare and medicine.”

  “That is a most probable outcome, Dr. Tropsha,” said the ship's AI. “At the very least, I would expect your species' longevity to be extended to several hundred years.”

  “How do I address you?” asked Ludmilla, unsurprised at being addressed by the sentient ship. Talking ships had become a normal part of her life.

  “Please call me M'tak, Doctor.”

  “Very good, M'tak. When we get time, I will want to examine Ms. Ogawa in detail.”

  “Yes, Ma'am.” The AI had considered the relationship between Jack and Ludmilla and come to the conclusion that they effectively formed functional unit. As far as it was concerned she ranked only second to the Captain.

  Seated in his powered wheelchair, TK looked around the cavernous shuttle bay. “You know, the Peggy Sue is a mighty fine ship, but this, this is a by God starship.”

  “I am honored to have you aboard, Mr. Parker,” intoned the ship. “If not for you the Peggy Sue would never have been built, Earth-life would not have ventured forth into the galaxy, and I would have never been rescued from semi-death drifting off Sirius. Because of you, Earth was able to fend off those who would have exterminated all life in this system. You, TK Parker, were the nexus from which the history of the Galaxy has been changed.”

  “Well, these folks had something to do with it, along with a whole bunch more back at the base.”

  “I didn't think that I would ever live to see the day, TK,” Jack added, “but I do believe that M'tak made you blush.”

  “That's all well and good,” the embarrassed Oil man replied, “but seems to me we got stuff to do. We got a Fleet to build, a planet to heal and a solar system to colonize. We probably should keep searching for other forms of life too—whether friendly, hostile or otherwise.”

  As the senior officers conversed with each other and the ship, to one side the younger officers exchanged introductions. The two tall officers from Farside stood before the two young explorers just returned from the stars.

  “You're a commander now, Billy Ray?” said Bobby, perhaps a tiny bit jealous. “Does this mean I have to call you sir all the time, pardner?”

  “That's 'pardner, Sir', Mr. Danner,” Billy Ray said officiously, and then broke into a grin. “I wouldn't worry about it, Bobby. I'm sure that those who accompanied the Captain on the greatest voyage in human history will be suitably promoted in due course. In the mean time, I would like you to meet Lcdr. Elizabeth Melaku, squadron commander of Farside's corvettes.”

  “It's very nice to meet you, and please call me Beth.”

  Bobby nodded. “Beth, may I present Dr. Mizuki Ogawa?”

  Mizuki smiled and bowed to Beth and Billy Ray. “Commander Melaku-san, it is an honor to meet you. Commander Vincent-san, Bobby has often spoken of you during our voyage.” Above her a swarm of brightly colored butterflies swirled in a rainbow display.

  With a discreet glance at the overhead display, Beth returned Mizuki's bow. “I am honored to meet both of you. I have heard so much about you from Billy Ray. I think we shall all become very good friends.”

  Following the senior officers into the ship proper, Billy Ray and Bobby fell in behind their significant others.

  “Yer lookin' right fit, Bobby, you must be working out. But either you shrank or Mizuki grew a couple of inches.”

  “I'll fill you in on that later, Billy Ray. Let's just say that the ship really takes care of its crew.” Ahead, the butterflies—a cloud of placid blues and greens—flowed through the doorway in pursuit of their goddess.

  “What's with the flock of butterflies, pardner?”

  Bobby rolled his eyes. “On Ring Station, Mizuki took out a bunch of attacking hostiles with her katana—the one Dr. Saito gave her. That impressed the flying alien fan-boys so much they've been following her around ever since.”

  “Pretty.”

  “They're a real pain in the ass, but she likes them and the Captain let 'em come along. She even talks to them in Japanese—it's like being in a Godzilla era monster movie.”

  “You must have seen some weird stuff out there.”

  “No weirder than running around with a hold full of warrior vegetables.”

  “You got a point there, Bobby.”

  “Yeah, I can't wait to see what happens next.”

  Epilogue

  System of the People's Moon

  Over ten years had passed since the People's disastrous attack on the planet known as Earth. Their ship, the Destroyer of Worlds, never returned from that hellish system. The world that the People called home was actually a large moon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system just over ten parsecs from Sol. About the size of Titan, it was escorted in its orbit by two much smaller moons in its L4 and L5 points. With temperatures that caused methane and ethane to fall as rain, it was a world inhospitable to warm life, but then the People were not warm life.

  Neither were the pseudo-arthropods adapted for conditions favored by the Dark Lords. They fell in the uncomfortable position between the darkness and the light, between the dark ones and warm life. As such they were recruited for service as a slave race, minions to the Dark Lords, who seldom ventured forth from the frozen rogue planets they favored.

  If any of the moon's inhabitants had been looking at the sky in just the right location they might have spotted a strange phenomenon—a reflective ring in space that for an instant was wreathed in stars. It was the mouth of a wormhole, a tunnel betwe
en distant locations in 3-space. From that gaping orifice emerged an object ten kilometers in diameter. The asteroid was made primarily from an iron/nickle blend with an average density of 8g/cm3, giving it a total mass of roughly 4.2 trillion metric tons.

  The object was traveling at a velocity of 10,000km/sec with respect to the gas giant that the People's moon orbited. With careful observation the inhabitants of the People's moon would discover that it was headed toward the gas giant and would barely miss striking it. With closer measurements it would become evident that the massive asteroid would arrive in 20 hours, at a point tangent to the moon's orbit. This would occur just as the moon itself reached that same point in space. The asteroid was going to strike the moon head on.

  The moon itself had an orbital velocity of 5.6km/sec, but that hardly mattered. Given the asteroid's mass and velocity a collision with the moon would deliver kinetic energy equivalent to 50,000,000,000,000 megatons of TNT.

  A few hours before the impact another ring of stars heralded the arrival of a ship. The vessel was not of Earth manufacture, nor was it a part of Earth's Space Navy. It possessed drives and weaponry that Earth's shipyards had yet to duplicate, including the capability to create wormholes. That ship was the ancient T'aafhal battle cruiser M'tak Ka'fek.

  On board the M'tak Ka'fek were an odd assortment of creatures, most of them from Earth itself. Seated in the commander's chair was its captain, a human named Jack Sutton. Next to him was his wife, Ludmilla, and their two children. The elder was a boy, eight years old, named Roger after the Captain's father. The younger was a girl of six, named Svetlana, after Ludmilla's sister. Svetlana, which can mean light, blessed, or holy depending on context, was not living up to her name.

  “Why are we here? There is nothing to do here. This is boring!”

  “Hush, Sveta,” her mother admonished. “This is an historic occasion. One that you will be happy you attended later in life.”

  “She's such a brat,” Roger said. He loved his sister, but picking on each other is what young siblings do.

  “Do not pick on your sister, Roger,” said Jack out of parental reflex. Behind him he heard TK chuckle.

  Standing in what its occupants had dubbed the “old folks'” section were TK Parker, Maria, Isbjørn and Bear. TK had not needed a wheelchair for almost ten years, ever since Ludmilla convinced him to spend a few days in the medical section's regeneration tanks. He was also looking decades younger than his nearly ninety years. After discovering that he had another century to live he came to his senses and asked Maria to marry him. She agreed, becoming an honorary member of the old folks' section.

  Bear and Isbjørn were now approaching their third decade, old age for polar bears in the wild. Ludmilla worked with M'tak and some colleagues trying to find a way to extend the bears' lifetimes. Currently they were expected to reach only fifty, which Jack considered proof that nature was a cold-hearted bitch. To one side was their eldest cub, Umky, with his mate and a pair of cubs of their own. The intelligent polar bears seemed to have survived as a species and were actively hunting for a planet they could colonize. A place they could stock with seals and no annoying human hunters.

  Among the crowd of observers were a number of smaller furry creatures—Poonta-ta-ka and his brood. The lone surviving trader from the Captain's quest for antimatter, the badly injured creature had also been healed by the M'tak's advanced medical technology. After the rest of the crew discovered his natural odor the ship re-engineered his scent glands to emit a fragrance more pleasing to humans. Bear continued to complain about the smell nonetheless, and gave him the name he was now commonly known by—Stinky.

  When a colony of Kieshnar-rak-kat-tra was found only fifty light-years away, the Captain offered to repatriate the trader. Stinky went on board the colony's station with a small antimatter egg and returned with a wife, a bunch of rugs, trade goods, and a request to stay with the ship. The Captain put the question to the crew and they approved. Soon there were a number of inquisitive little traders running about the ship. With their symmetrical six digit hands and dual opposable thumbs they proved quite adept at fixing mechanical devices and similar intricate tasks.

  Also on board at their own request was the former Triad Ambassador, NatHanGon. The Triad decided that they needed to see more of the surrounding galaxy in order to understand what changes had occurred during their race's self-imposed time of isolation. Once the Guardians' role in the defense of the solar system became known, the ship's AI revised its opinion of the long-lived plants. In many ways it was happy to have NatHanGon on board because the Triad came from a species that had been around for million years. M'tak could talk with the Triad about things other crewmembers knew nothing about.

  Bears, Kieshnar-rak-kat-tra, and Triad joined an eclectic collection of humans—some veterans of previous voyages, others new to the Captain's command. Scientists, adventurers, and ex-service members, those who fit in found a place on the crew. The only hard and fast rule was that the Captain's word was law.

  The ship's status was a bit mystifying to outsiders, but not to Jack and Ludmilla. Following Earth's victory, the fleet began a rapid expansion. Some wanted the M'tak to become its flagship and Jack its admiral, but Captain Jack refused to go along.

  “I have had enough of service life,” Jack told the high command on Farside. “We will be around if we are ever needed again, but Earthlings—both human and ursine—need to find their own way in the Galaxy.”

  What he did not tell them was that the bond between himself and the ship was not the same as the one between a Navy captain and his ship. While a Navy ship may sail under many captains, a T'aafhal battle cruiser was bound to its captain for life. It might accept a new captain when Jack died, but until then it was his alone to command. That could result in complications Jack just did not wish to deal with. So, with Ludmilla's wholehearted approval, Jack and his ship retired to civilian life.

  He made an exception for the mission they were now on, however. This was the final act of retribution, the closing chapter of Earth's bloody and traumatic introduction to the wider galaxy. It was from the largest moon of the gas giant in front of them that creatures sailed forth and slaughtered nearly seven billion men, women, and children without warning. Jack had actually delayed this day, hoping that the inhabitants of the moon would demonstrate some quality making them worth sparing.

  “Second thoughts, Jack?” asked Ludmilla, sensing his pensive mood. Before the asteroid was set on its course, they had talked at length about the morality of this act. In the end, they decided it must be done.

  “No, my lady. In the decade since the first attack on Earth they have exhibited no remorse, showed no compassion for any species except their own, taken no action indicating a desire for redemption.”

  “I have heard you talk of redemption before, Captain, and I am puzzled. How can a race that nearly drove yours to extinction—who have undoubtedly exterminated many other races—how can they do anything worthy of redemption?”

  “Redemption is seldom earned, M'tak, but attempting to atone for one's past can lead to forgiveness by others. It is not logical but comes from religious belief. Only by admitting one's sins and asking for forgiveness can the sinner be saved.”

  “I see... and these creatures have not sought forgiveness, or even admitted that they have sinned.”

  “That's right. See the ship in orbit around the moon?”

  “Yes, Captain, of course.”

  “That is a new planet killer—they obviously still serve the Dark Lords and will exterminate more helpless species in the future. That is why we are about to take their future from them.”

  “You are going to destroy their planet, Father?” Roger asked, the reason for their voyage finally clear to him. “Cool!”

  “Yes, Son, but it is not cool or anything to be proud of. It is a sad, terrible thing we are about to do. Unfortunately, sometimes such things must be done.”

  “Ten seconds until impact, Captain,” Bear repor
ted, the old folks' section encompassed his normal position at the main fire-control console. The observers fell silent as the last few seconds ticked down. On the forward display, a magnified image of the moon hovered in space as the asteroid flashed into view. Striking the moon, the asteroid vaporized and became one with its target. The immense kinetic energy transferred by the hurtling mass caused the entire satellite to deform, like a water balloon struck by a bullet.

  In slow-motion the moon folded in on itself, effectively turning inside out. A spray of matter spewed from the backside of the no longer spherical satellite. All that was left was a fan of debris and incandescent gas. In the fullness of time the gas giant would have a spectacular set of rings in place of its lost moon. There was no chance anything living survived.

  Most of the observers were left speechless, fixated on the horrific spectacle before them. Eventually, Jack looked away from the display.

  “It is done.” Ludmilla put her arm around Jack's waist and gave her husband supportive a hug. Jack placed his hand on his son's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I pray to God you never have to do something like this Roger, or your children.”

  Not understanding why his father seemed so upset Roger simply answered, “yes, Dad.”

  As the ship turned to jump back to friendlier space, NatHanGon and the M'tak Ka'fek's AI conversed privately. “They are a strange species, full of contradictions and conflicting emotions; The destruction of the moon was certainly thorough, not just killing the inhabitants but ensuring no life can arise there in the future; Are these humans truly the creatures your long dead master's tried to create?”

  “I believe the humans on this ship have exceeded my creators' wildest expectations. They carried out the destruction of the Dark Lords' minions without hesitation, yet they are saddened, even horrified by their own actions.”

  “So, the T'aafhal would be pleased with the outcome? They seem quite proficient at destruction, both as individuals and as a species; For good or evil, they are going to spread across this arm of the galaxy.”