The Sakkara

by Donald Nicklas

  “Alaya, I have no idea and none of us have been able to come up with an explanation concerning slipstream travel. The only conclusion we have come up with is that this ship did not travel the slipstreams.”

  The captains Slone and Shegai looked at each other. No human civilization had so far found a way to travel faster than light without sailing the slipstreams. Now they were being told that here was a ship that did not use sail power.

  Christopher had a thought and voiced it. “Diana, is it possible this ship is not capable of faster than light travel?”

  “If we had found it in an inhabited system, I might say yes. However, way out here? There are also no identifiable engines. The only structure aboard that is a total mystery, is the round structure with alien symbols on the side and having what appears to be a control panel. We came across this structure in the center of the ship when she was still on the planet. We have absolutely no idea what this represents.”

  Just then, their discussion was interrupted by one of the techs coming out of the ship and saluting the captains when she saw them. The tech then turned to Diana Gardner. “Commander, we think we have found a way to activate the ship, but we have no idea what power source it requires.”

  Diana entered the ship and the Slones followed with Captain Shegai behind. Arabella Shegai was going to make sure she witnessed everything about the discovery that cost her almost three years of her life. She still had no idea why she had to be on this mission in the first place, but she took the time to learn a great deal about the battleship NR Tempestas and her officers and crew. Now she was present for a monumental discovery and she did not intend to miss any of it. The tech led them into the central part of the ship containing the spherical object they had been discussing. Several techs were standing next to it, examining the panel affixed to the side.

  “Ok, Billings, show me what you discovered.”

  The tech moved closer to the control panel. “This panel seems to be the central control for the ship. As far as we can tell, the wires leading from this panel enter the object and connect the panel to all of the other systems of the ship. This is as close to a central control panel as we have on this ship.”

  Slone went over and saw that the panel had several buttons of various colors as well as an unintelligible symbolic language. Christopher Slone was the only person aboard who had ever seen a Saltic control panel and this was one of them. “Diana, this is a Saltic control panel. Those alien worms have been in our galaxy and who knows what they have been doing here.”

  “Captain, if they were here it was eight centuries ago. Moreover, this ship is only part Saltic. It is also meant for human use. Perhaps the passenger can shed some light on this. How is she doing?”

  “Dr. Tirpak says she is still in a coma from stasis sickness. Since she has been in stasis for eight centuries, this is unknown ground for all of us. The doctor is concerned that even if she wakes up, what will her brain be like and will there be any damage from prolonged stasis?”

  “Well then,” Alaya responded, “we have two problems here. How far should we go to checking out a ship of which we have no knowledge? Our mission was to find it and bring it back. Since the Romani knew about it, I wonder if they know how to activate it?”

  “Guess we’ll find out when we get it home. Diana, as you examine the ship, activate only what you are sure of and nothing else.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Slone and the group moved into the bridge area of the ship and saw that the consoles were labeled with the alien characters of the Saltic along with human standard labels below them. “Our linguists back home may be able to translate the language of the Saltic with this dual labeling.”

  Alaya looked at her husband with a skeptical expression, “I wouldn’t count on it. How would you grasp human language from control panel words such as ‘on’, ‘off’, ‘fire’, etc.?”

  “Good point, but then again, that’s why they’re linguists and we are ships’ captains.”

  Just then, the lights suddenly activated on the bridge of the Sakkara and the very panels they were looking at began to display readouts. Diana activated her com implant and said, “O’Brian, report to the Sakkara Bridge.”

  A few minutes later, a red haired, pale complexioned engineering tech in his late thirties entered the bridge. As soon as he saw the Slones he snapped to attention and said, “Engineering Technologist Sean O’Brian reporting.”

  “At ease,” Slone said.

  Before Slone could say more, Diana looked intensely at her tech and said, “I thought I passed the word not to touch anything unless you clear it with me first.”

  “Yes, sir. We didn’t touch a thing. Since we had hooked up the Sakkara to the ship’s power, her batteries have been charging and, as far as we can tell, once the batteries reached full power, they fed electricity into the Sakkara’s reactor controls and these, in turn, activated the reactor. The Sakkara is now on her own power and her systems have automatically disconnected her from the Tempestas.”

  The level of artificial intelligence aboard the alien ship was a shock to all present. The ship was now functioning autonomously. “Can we shut her down again?” Christopher asked.

  “Captain, we don’t even know how she powered up and have no idea how to shut her down.”

  As this discussion was transpiring, a humming started coming from the center area of the ship. The group on the bridge followed the sound and soon reached the hold containing the unknown spherical object. They could hear the humming coming from the object and, when they touched it, could feel it vibrating. Slone turned to Diana, “Any idea what this is doing and what we are looking at here?”

  “Captain, none of us have any idea what this is, and this is the first it even stirred.”

  The panel on the sphere came to life and readouts in both human and alien language began to appear. The problem was that even the human readouts were unintelligible since the humans had no idea about what they were reporting. As the group watched the panel, the klaxon sounded ship wide.

  “General Quarters, captain to the bridge. This is not a drill.”

  Everyone ran to his or her battle stations and the Slones went to the bridge along with captain Shegai, who had no battle station. As they moved through the flight deck and up the ramp to the bridge, they were dodging serpents running to their assigned stations. As always, the serpents almost ran over the humans. Christopher arrived on the bridge just as Paul McMann left the captain’s chair for his navigation station.

  “Paul, what’s happening?”

  “Captain, we detected a power surge in front of the ship. I ordered a full stop but our momentum will still carry us forward for a short time. Something is appearing in front of the ship that has a great deal of power.”

  As Slone settled in his chair, Alaya and Arabella took positions on either side, along with the children acting as runners for communication with the legion. The legion itself was positioned in the forward hangar area and the passageways leading up to the hangar, in case they needed to deploy for a boarding action. As Slone and the bridge crew watched, the star field in front of the ship began to distort and slowly a spiral developed. As they stared ahead, the spiral began to take on a bluish-green color and the Slones and the remnant of the Andromeda 7 were struck with fear.

  “Paul, get us out of here.”

  “I can’t captain. We are being pulled in.”

  “What is this?” Captain Shegai asked.

  Slone turned to her and responded, “It’s a wormhole.”

  As the words passed his lips, the ship appeared to distort before their eyes and elongated into the wormhole. Suddenly the crew began to hold their ears as a high-pitched sound filled their heads. Some began to pass out and others could be seen to vomit. As Slone pitched forward from his chair, he saw some of the crew pass out just as consciousness left him. Even the Romani bridge guards had trouble keeping alert and on station. In the sickbay, they could hear the crying of the children in their s
ection next to the infirmary. To this was suddenly added the scream of the passenger from the Sakkara as the pull from the wormhole brought her to consciousness and caused her to react. Within seconds, the ship was swallowed up by the anomaly.

  Chapter 4 – The Navigator

  The Tempestas traversed the wormhole instantly and exited at the opposite end. The crew began to recover their senses and Slone picked himself and his wife off the floor. Captain Shegai had managed to hang onto the back of the captain’s chair and remained conscious. Some of the bridge crew was still sitting at their stations, whereas others were picking themselves off the floor and the guards were resuming their positions.

  “All stations report in and Diana get me a damage report.”

  The bridge stations all reported normal operation and there was no damage to report. The serpent crewmembers had been discomforted by the piercing noise but they had not lost consciousness. They were more curious about what exactly happened, as were the humans aboard who had never experience a wormhole.

  “Paul, get me a fix on our position. Tom, open the battle channel.”

  Both acknowledged their orders and Slone pressed the button on his console to begin speaking to the crew. “Attention, crew of the Tempestas. What we just experienced was a trip through a wormhole. We are endeavoring to determine where we are and there is no damage to the ship. Any distortion you may have seen as we entered the wormhole was only a visual distortion and had no effect on the integrity of the vessel. Secure from General Quarters.”

  Just then, Roger Umgabe reported from his sensor console, “Captain, the wormhole just closed.”

  “Then we are here to stay. Paul, any fix on our position yet and are we still in our galaxy?”

  Captain Shegai gave a start at that last question. “Why do you ask if we are still in our galaxy?”

  “As you may recall when I filled you in about the Hayden, the last time we went through a wormhole, we ended up in the Andromeda galaxy.”

  Arabella Shegai now recalled that and was shocked that they could have gone to another galaxy. As she was thinking about this, Paul finally had a fix.

  “Captain, we are still in our galaxy and we are now on the other side of the galactic center from Earth. Total distance from Nova Romae is 80,000 light years.”

  Slone contemplated this development. “How long from here to Nova Romae?”

  Paul did some calculations. “Approximately 7 years if we had the fuel and a map of the slipstreams back to corporate space.”

  “Then we have to find out what happened. Roger, do a thorough scan of this system and let me know if there is anything unusual that would cause us to be brought here.” Slone then turned to the invisibility station, “Hister, make us invisible.”

  In a minute, Slone heard a hiss, “Sss. Captain, the ship is invisible.”

  “Helm move towards the nearest celestial body in this system.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Roger what is the readout on this system?”

  “Sensors indicate a single star system with a red dwarf as its primary and 13 planets, ten rocky with two having oxygen atmospheres. The wormhole deposited us into the center of the system rather than on the edge. The remaining three planets are gas giants with multiple moons. The system reads uninhabited with no telemetry of any kind present.”

  “Keep scanning and let me know if anything shows up.”

  Alaya looked at her husband, “You look worried, Christopher.”

  “I think I have reason to be. Why would a wormhole suddenly appear only to propel us across the galaxy to an uninhabited system? In addition, does this have anything to do with that ship we have on the flight deck? I’m starting to regret that you ever discovered that signal, Captain Shegai.”

  “You and me both, Captain Slone. You and me both.”

  “Roger, those planets with oxygen atmospheres, can they support life as we know it?”

  Roger looked at his readouts, “One of them can, and the other one is too cold. Only one is in the ‘Goldilocks zone’.” The ‘Goldilocks zone’ was an orbit around a star that was just the right distance from its star to have the correct temperatures for life, as humans knew it. Add to that oxygen and water, you had the ingredients for life to develop.

  “Take us into orbit around that planet. Hister, keep us invisible.”

  “Sss. Yes captain.”

  Slone watched as the ship changed direction slightly to move in closer to the star. Since the star was a red dwarf, the ‘Goldilocks zone’ was much closer to its primary than Earth to the sun or Nova Romae to its star.

  “Captain,” Alaya addressed her husband by rank since they were on duty, “Permission to leave the bridge and check on Olivia. She must have been frightened by the effects of the wormhole transit.”

  “Permission granted. Diana, since there is no damage to the ship, go along with Alaya and check on Allen as well.”

  Both women saluted and exited the bridge for the children’s area. Slone remained on the bridge and watched as they transited to the second planet from the star. He was lost in his thoughts, as he often was when traversing a system. To Slone there was nothing more boring than moving across a star system, since time and physics could not be changed and the ship could only move so fast. The wormhole had deposited them in the center of the star system; as a result, it would only take five and a half hours to reach their destination. Slone had already decided they would stay in this system until they discovered why the wormhole dropped them here, and why, for that matter, the wormhole happened in the first place. He was shaken out of his thoughts by a beep in his ear. He activated the comlink and his wife was on the other line.

  “Chris, Olivia and Allen are just fine. The screeching noise in their heads rattled the children a bit, but they soon recovered. From what Dr. Tirpak tells me, the passage through the wormhole woke up our guest and she is demanding to speak with someone in charge and wants to know where she is and why we are holding her.”

  “Any idea who she is?”

  “The doctor says her name is Julia Hammond and she is from the Brandenburger Corporation.”

  “Bring her up to the conference room with you. Make sure the guards I placed on her come along.”

  “Yes Chris.”

  Slone then turned to Tom Gardner, “Tom, Alaya reports the kids are just fine. Contact all department heads and Centurion Marshal along with Tavia to meet in the conference room in ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Slone then took the bridge elevator at the bottom of the rear ramp down two decks to the conference room. This used to be part of the dining room, which was repurposed. The mess halls were now in the sections below the cannon decks. There were actually three conference rooms side by side with movable walls to make one room for very large conferences. The primary conference room used was the forward of the three sections and had the golden eagle symbol of the Romani on the wall behind the head of the conference table. It was here that Slone sat as his officers entered. Tavia Marshal came in with the serpent Hatch at her side. Tavia was now a confident young woman of twenty-four who was revered by the entire race of serpents. Hatch never left her side and was both her friend and her bodyguard. Hatch was now officially assigned to the human she most loved as a bodyguard and she was the serpent assigned to the cloaking device on the scout ship Mary Rose. Tavia’s husband, Centurion Bill Marshal was also there as the primary centurion of the LEG CELERI legion stationed aboard the NR Tempestas. He had his staff with him, a mixed human and serpent group. As all were taking their places, Dr. Tirpak entered along with Alaya and Diana. With them was a young woman who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She was of medium height with a light complexion and dark hair worn in a braid over the left shoulder and down the front. Slone was struck by her attractiveness and had to remind himself that she was over eight hundred years old. He also wondered if anyone had told her yet what year it was. She had an air of command and she sat in the nearest s
eat to the entrance without being bid to do so. She looked around the room without uttering a sound and her eyes often fell on the serpents present, but to her credit, she did not react to the presence of aliens. Since the serpents were conversing in human speak, she must have realized that they were intelligent beings.

  Slone began the meeting by addressing the newcomer, “I understand that your name is Julia Hammond and we found you aboard an alien vessel. My name is Captain Christopher Slone and I am in command of this battleship, the NR Tempestas. One of our freighters picked up your telemetry signal over two years ago and we were sent here to investigate and retrieve your ship if possible. Since we did not expect anyone to be aboard, your presence with us is an added plus. Now I am sure you have as many questions for us as we for you. Tell us about the Sakkara,” Slone finished.

  Julia Hammond took a sip from the water in front of her and then looked at Captain Slone with great intensity. When she spoke, she had a seductively silky voice with the inflection of a citizen of Brandenburger Corporation. “Captain, I thank you for bringing me out of stasis, but the Sakkara is classified and, until I know which corporation you represent, I cannot tell you anything. I can’t even confirm if the Sakkara is of alien origin, though it appears you have aliens among your crew and no coreward corporation can claim that. I must assume then that you are from a Spinward corporation. Given the size of this ship, I would guess Sinclair Corporation, but you are not wearing Sinclair uniforms”

  Slone realized this was going to be like pulling teeth, but decided to play along for now. “Do you hold a military rank by which I may address you?”

  “I hold the rank of Commander of Navigation in the Brandenburger Corporation military. I look at all of you and do not recognize which corporation you are from, but I do know that you are not from Brandenburger.”