Starfire and the Space Dragons: A Grennig Crew Adenture

by Christine Westhead

  “Vermillion?”

  “No, Major, it is I, Delta Ten. Vermillion left me her smile as a gift.”

  “It’s a lovely smile,” said Erion, “but I can see a slight drawback if you power down every time you use it.” Del swung his long legs off the bench and stood up.

  “It was not the smile that caused the cascade failure, Major. Professor Lear also left me a gift.”

  “The bastard!” snapped Starfire.

  “In this instance, I believe his intentions to be good,” began Del. “I must speak with Captain Raan.” He strode quickly away with the others rushing to keep up with him. The coffees were on the go in Tranter’s main control room and everyone looked up expectantly as Delta Ten and his panting entourage walked in. “Captain Raan?” said Del.

  “Yeah?” he asked, suddenly suspicious. His inbuilt Marine training kicked in and he thought he was about to be asked to volunteer for something.

  “May I speak with you in private?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, Captain. I think you may have the answers we seek in this matter.” Raan shrugged and stood up.

  “Sure, come on.” They were back within minutes and Raan sat down, a look of surprise on his face. Everyone looked at him and he said, “Guys, I think I’m the proud owner of Planet Four Two Zero Three Six.”

  “What?” from Starfire.

  “Where?” that was Erion.

  “How?” from Tranter. They all spoke at the same time and Raan put up his hand for silence. He motioned Delta Ten forward.

  “When Professor Lear repaired my positronic brain, he left a small but powerful sub-routine inside it. As soon as I tried to access my memory banks for small planet locations and specifications, it activated and flooded my brain with information that was too powerful for me to process all at once. It appears that he was the owner of a small, shielded planet not far from Aristona in the Norbus system. Apart from himself and Adrianna, it is uninhabited. He has left this planet to Captain Raan as a redress for the anguish he and his daughter caused him.”

  “Oooh,” Starfire put two and two together quite quickly. “We’re looking for a nice little planet aren’t we?” Erion spoke up.

  “We can’t assume Raan will want to part with it, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “Aw, come on!” Raan grinned. “What would I want a planet for? Anyway, it might not be any good for a lot of people. It might be really small. We got to go and have a look at it.” He caught Erion’s eye. “What do you say, Major?”

  “It could solve a lot of problems,” she said. “What’s the deadline for the first rescues, Del?”

  “Just over two days from now, Major. That only gives us one day to travel to the planet and back again and thirty six hours to plan and execute the rescue of the Serrellian prisoners and the Terrellian families.” Erion nodded and looked at Thirty Seven.

  “I think the Terrellians and the Aurian prisoners on Serrell should all meet,” she said, “get together as it were. Could you get a message to Serrell and suggest this, please?”

  “I will certainly do this, Major.”

  “Also, we need to know the exact location of the pick-up point,” she added, "and it would be good if it could be as far away from the Federation work site on Serrell as possible.”

  “I will send a message as soon as I can.”

  “How about the ships, Gant?” continued Erion. “Are they standing by?”

  “We have three passenger vessels, all capable of carrying five hundred souls, not counting the Grennig and the Rising Star, all at your command, Major.”

  “That’s great, Gant,” she smiled, grimly. “I think I might need some fighters to cause a diversion, but if I do that, I’ve ruined the surprise for later on when I need to move my other refugees.”

  “Everything not on active duty will be held in reserve for you, Major. It would help if we knew more about what was going on.”

  “I’m sorry, Gant, I can’t tell you anything more than the fact that we have to get over twelve hundred people off planet Serrell and get them to safety without the Terrellians or the Federation knowing about it.”

  “It looks like you’ll need the Rising Star for a diversion, rather than picking up folk, Major,” said Jed.

  “If you could be in charge of that part of it, General, it would leave the Grennig free to get the refugees off the planet’s surface and into the recuse ships.”

  “I got the plans Hal and Starfire brought back with ‘em,” said Jed, with a grin. “If nothing has changed, I reckon we can stir ‘em up enough to get everyone away from you. How long will you need?”

  “Enough time to get about twelve hundred people and all of their stuff onto three transports,” said Raan.

  “We’ll have to co-ordinate the fuel tankers and meet somewhere to re-fuel,” said Gant. “Tranter, can you put a map up for us?” Tranter left Erion’s side and walked to his console. A few seconds later a three dimensional map of the Aurian system appeared in front of them.

  “There’s Serrell,” he said and lit up the planet for them.

  “And there’s Manta Six,” put in Raan.

  “Somewhere between Manta and the Norbus system would be ideal, then,” said Jed, thoughtfully.

  “Where’s you Planet three nine whatever?” asked Tranter. “It doesn’t appear on my map.”

  “It is shielded,” answered Delta Ten. He glared briefly at the map and a little bright light showed up. “It is there.”

  “Between here and Aristona, then,” mused Jed Cloud. “It looks like it was made to order. It shouldn’t take long for you to go and have a look at it, Major.”

  “They need to eat and rest for a couple of hours, first,” said Tranter, making sure he looked anywhere but towards Erion.

  “We can rest on the way …ow!” Raan rubbed his elbow. “That hurt, Lieutenant,” Raan glared at Starfire. “What did you do that for?” He caught Tranter’s eye and light dawned. “Oh, yeah. We really need to rest here for a couple of hours at least,” he smirked.

  Chapter 14

  “Well I can’t see this planet of yours,” Erion gazed into her scope then across the pilot section to Delta Ten, who sat with his back to her. “Can you put its position on my scope, Del?” They had just come out of hyperspace on the edge of the Norbus System and were heading towards Raan’s inheritance at speed point five. “Keep a look out for other ships will you, Hal,” she continued. “We don’t want anyone to see us here.”

  “Sure, Major,” he drawled, knowing that his laid back attitude would annoy her.

  “I need to re-configure the ship’s sensors,” said Delta Ten. It is not a physical shield, it is designed on a holographic field generator to confuse the eye.” His honey coloured fingers flashed across the crystals in front of him in a blur and the heads up display in front of Starfire shimmered and changed. There was no planet, and then suddenly there was. It sat like a little blue jewel in the black sky. It even had a tiny moon.

  “Hal?” asked Erion.

  “There’s nothing bad that shows on my scope, Major,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything on it at all. No power source, no buildings of any kind.”

  “They’re probably shielded too,” murmured Raan.

  “Del, find their house and send the location to Starfire’s heads up,” ordered Erion.

  “Can you do one, low pass orbit please, Lieutenant?” asked Delta Ten. The Grennig made a slow approach and skimmed the atmosphere. “I have it, Major. Sending the co-ordinates to the heads up now.” They would normally have gone down to the planet in their shuttle, the Little Dragon but they didn’t want the Grennig to show up on any passing spaceship’s scans. Erion found a flat piece of ground and the Grennig landed in a cloud of dust and leaves before settling down on its landing struts.

  "This place is big enough to use as a staging post," said Raan. "It'd be a good place to refuel on the way to Terrell."

  "You're right, Raan," mused Erion, it's out of the way enough and
it's three parsecs nearer the Terrellian system than the Cantina or Manta Six. Let's go and have a look at it."

  It was autumn, and a cool breeze stirred the orange and brown leaves at the rear of a large, white house. It was constructed of some sort of plastic and had a large paved area on two sides and at the front. There was a hover car under an open porch on one side of the house and a large, all weather, generator out the back. The Professor had obviously been working on this one, because it had more than the average solar panels, wind turbines and water wheels placed at strategic points on its large sides and virtually guaranteed some sort of power output whatever the weather.

  The front door opened silently as they approached the porch and they went inside. Del seemed to know the way and led them through the house, past the wide staircase that led to the upper floors to a small door underneath the stairs. They went down and found the professor’s laboratory.

  The lights came on at the top of the stairs and lit up one by one as they passed them.

  “There are the controls for the shield generator,” said Delta Ten, pointing to a console. “It would be a large machine,” he said, walking to the panel. “It is probably outside somewhere.” He looked at the dials and clocks on the wall. “This is a small planet. It has a fourteen hour rotation so the days will be short.” He waved his hands over some other controls and the wall lit up to show various holograms in sequence.

  “Gardens,” said Starfire, “Look at all that stuff. And fruit trees too.”

  “Quite a nice little set up,” said Raan. “Perfect for our refugees.”

  “That is if they want to come here,” said Erion. “There’s no shelter that I can see, other than this house. How many people could this planet sustain, Del?”

  “There is plenty of water and vegetation, Major,” he answered. “If they had some sort of shelter and enough food to keep them going, I would say thousands; perhaps tens of thousands, eventually.”

  “We need to get some temporary housing here,” said Raan, and some more weather generators.”

  “Can you work out what we’ll need, Del?” asked Erion, “and cost it out. I need to know if I’ll be needing any more money.” They went back upstairs and wandered around some more. The house could quite easily cater for a dozen people or so and there was plenty of power to run the food and inorganic replicators. They sat in the large dining room and Starfire looked at the many pictures and photograms of Adrianna on the walls.

  “She was pretty, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, she was,” said Raan, wistfully. He suddenly brightened, “Hey, I own this planet, don’t I Del?”

  “Yes, Captain. I have the will and the deeds in my memory banks should you require it.”

  “Planet Raan,” he looked out of the window and sighed contentedly. “It has a kind of ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t call it Planet Raan,” said Starfire, her mouth full of coffee and walnut cake, “the Federation would be down on it like a ton of bricks once you registered it with the Norbus System Landbank.”

  “I don’t mean officially, you idiot, I just mean, you know, locally.” He turned to Erion, whose face went from laughing to serious as soon as he caught her eye. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Major? Like when we’re in the Gateway Base, we say stuff like ‘let’s get back to the Cantina’, and everybody knows where it is. Now the Cantina ain’t registered with the Norbus Landbank but everybody knows, just the same.”

  “You mean to say you actually want to name a whole planet after yourself?” asked Starfire, wiping her lips with a napkin.

  “When you say it like that it does sound kinda showy. We’ll call it Planet Four Two three, what was it Del?”

  “Four two zero three six,” he answered.

  “We’ll never remember all that,” he grumbled.

  “Nikal,” said Starfire, suddenly, “what about Nikal?”

  “Yeah,” Raan looked down at the table, “I like that. Planet Nikal it is.” Nikal was the name of Raan’s elder brother and Starfire’s commander. He had been killed in a fighter crash on the day that they had all met. The mood had definitely dipped and Erion stood up from the table.

  “Have you got all the information you need about this place, Del?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Then let’s get back to Tranter’s base,” she said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever done so much flying on a mission before,” said Starfire as she and Raan took the mighty Grennig back up into the atmosphere.

  “Good job the Citizens gave the engines the once over when we were on Manta,” said Raan. “You never thought about it when we were in the Marines, did you? Servicing, re-fuelling and fixing just kinda happened didn’t it?”

  “I know, Captain,” Starfire slid her seat back. “Who’s on watch while we’re hyperspace?”

  “Me and Hal,” said Raan, moodily. He had a low boredom threshold and Hal was never the best of company, either shooting holographic fighters out of existence at his gunnery simulator or falling asleep. Since his reactions were broadly the same whether he was awake or not, Erion turned a blind eye to his dozing, but it made him poor company.

  “Enjoy!” smirked Starfire. “Del’s giving me and Erion a massage and a makeover. Bye.” She blew him a kiss and left.

  Thirty Seven was back at Tranter’s base and they discussed the little planet with him. He promised to arrange the acquisition and delivery of weather generators, replicators, vehicles and housing modules. There was a fuel store at the back of the house that was sufficient for a two seater planet hopper, but Thirty Seven agreed to drop a mobile fuel tanker off for the time being.

  “I have heard back from Serrell,” he said. “Everyone seems to want to go to Katraia, but they do not yet know of Planet Nikal.” Raan and Starfire exchanged a look. It was a fitting monument to the Commander, but it still hurt a bit to think of him and it was too late to change it now.”

  “How soon can you let them know about it?” asked Erion.

  “It will be easier to contact Vermillion and ask her to relay a message to Kaura,” answered Thirty Seven. They have managed to set up a direct, closed beam that travels faster than light. I should be able to get an answer within twelve hours.”

  “Twelve hours!” Everyone looked at each other in amazement.

  “There is nothing more you can do,” said Thirty Seven. I recommend that you all relax here while your ships are painted up and I return with your answer. I will arrange to have the supplies sent to Planet Nikal. Everything will be waiting for you on your return from Serrell.” His voice lowered in tone slightly as he changed the subject. “According to our latest information from Kaura, the Federation has sent more machinery and men to the Serrell work site. They have shelved their plans for a new Information Retrieval Building there as they fear the ground is unstable after the earthquakes.” Everyone smiled broadly. The Information retrieval buildings were huge towers, hundreds of storeys high and news of the earthquakes must have frightened them. “However,” the smiles dimmed, “Terrell has leased out part of the planet Serrell to the Federation. The Aurian Marine Base is to move there, along with a prison and an outpost for the Galactic Police.”

  “That’ll hit the Steelers hard,” mused Hal. “A lot of families depend on wages from the base.”

  “They have been given the chance of moving to Serrell,” said Thirty Seven,” but nobody has taken up the offer.”

  “They won’t,” said Starfire, bitterly. “They’re too scared to go outside. The fraggin’ Senate has turned them all into rabbits.”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do about it, Star,” said Hal. For hundreds of years, the ruling Senate had kept the Terrellians afraid to go out onto the surface with rumours and lies about radiation and storms in an effort to keep control of its underground population. Steel City was bursting at the seams but the agoraphobia and the constricting customs and rules were too ingrained.

  “The Senate says they will use the ex
tra revenue to extend Steel City to relieve the overcrowding.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Starfire, “like that’s gonna happen.”

  “I must get this information to Serrell as soon as possible.” Thirty Seven stood up and clanked towards the door.

  “We take off for Serrell in twenty two hours,” said Erion, looking down at the schedule she had sketched out for herself. “We’ll take everyone to back Planet Nikal to start with and work out who wants to go to Katraia afterwards. That way we won’t need to go to Manta Six at all. If we keep the windows shielded and don’t give them any access to navigation equipment, they won’t know where they are unless we tell them.”

  “You plan on keeping the location of Nikal secret then?” said Starfire.

  “I think it’s best to keep its location known only to trusted people till we all get sorted,” said Erion. “You can’t take a secret back once it’s been told.”

  “Very well, said Thirty Seven from the hatch. “The convoy will rendezvous at the Terrellian system thirty hours from now.”

  The Grennig and the Rising Star, painted to look like pirate raiders, slid to a halt three hundred metres and fifteen minutes apart on the farthest edge of the Terrellian system. The Grennig crew were in their usual positions, Starfire and Raan as pilot and co-pilot, Del to Starfire’s right at the computer and engineering console, Erion to Raan’s left at navigation and Hal, just inside the hatch at the Starboard Gunnery section. Within minutes, three large star drive passenger vessels appeared as if from nowhere and slid to a halt beside them.

  “Del, send a coded message to Kaura on the frequency they gave us,” said Erion.

  “Message sent,” answered Delta Ten. Thirty seconds later, Kaura’s rich, warm tones entered their brains without first going through their ears. Hal and Starfire were used to this by now, but Erion and Raan gave a start.

  “Greetings, ship Grennig.”

  “Your majesty,” began Hal, “it’s one o’clock in the morning Aurian Standard Time. Our passenger ships are right behind us. By the time we reach your co-ordinates, it will be three o’ clock. Are you ready for us?”