by David Buck
A massive clawed arm lashed out and sent two Traders hurtling the length of the room. As the arm pulled back, the captain risked a shot that punched a hole clean through the queen’s shoulder, causing the extended right arm to drop to the huge beast’s side. Garendestat also took a shot, but only badly grazed the queen’s left thigh and deeply scoured the bulkhead door behind. A shriek of anger and rage issued from the Voorde queen and she charged back across the full length of the auxiliary station to the other doorway. The other squad members had the presence of mind to shout ‘all down’ over their radios and had then they dropped smoke flares. Even as the flares had begun to obscure the room, both Narindestat and Garendestat had hit the Voorde queen solidly in the abdomen with blaster shots from their blasters.
Both Traders were aware of a rapidly moving mass that had smashed in turn into each of the stanchions they were crouching behind. Before the massive Voorde queen staggered out into the storage area and was engaged by the other waiting Traders. The queen had paused to strike one trader a glancing blow with her good left arm, before staggering several metres further into the storage area.
Narindestat and Garendestat had yelled over the radio for all the other squad members nearby to stay down and had followed the queen into the storage area. Calmly the two Traders placed several more blaster shots into the massive Voorde form. They both waited until the queen fell then raced over with their knives to ensure the queen was very dead. From the auxiliary station came confirmation that only one crew member was injured, and that all Voorde drones had been confirmed as killed.
Captain Narindestat’s relief at killing the Voorde queen was short-lived, as a further message from the auxiliary station confirmed a deep fear, for the eaten remains of Trader crew were scattered in that location. The sombre crew scrapped the eggs on the wall into waiting bags, then sectioned and bagged the dead Voorde into larger bags. The crew finally dragged the bags into the large rear airlock overlooking the massive engines.
Narindestat and Garendestat took sole responsibility for carefully packing the pitiful remains of their lost crew into a sole bag that soon joined the other bags in the rear airlock. Narindestat now radioed a call to first lieutenant Kureldestat on the bridge as Garendestat closed the inner door of the airlock.
‘Captain to Kureldestat, please give me a minute long ten percent burn on the main fusion engines in two minutes. Note that we will have the passing over ceremony in the main cargo space in four hours.’
The bridge crew replied to confirm the order, the engines soon flared into life, and a low rumble shook the deck around the Traders. The captain pressed the emergency override on the airlock, and the pressurised air shot the bags into the exhaust plume of the fusion drive, whereupon they were promptly vaporised.
In the main cargo hold stood the research rig, a portable structure heavily secured to the main cargo hold floor near the now closed external doors. The research rig now held a deadly surprise. The air tight and heavily shielded research rig contained several Voorde drones and an immature queen that had hidden from the dominant queen and gone into hibernation. The lack of mental presence of the dominant queen had caused the new queen to awaken. She had mated with several drones, and quietly sent them out hunting for both easy Trader targets and remaining drones belonging to the former queen. Both types of target were to be killed and eaten, there was never any doubt about that, as the new queen started to nest in the research rig.
The saddened Traders later held their funeral service for their dead crew members. The sad songs and chanting of the service hid the small noises the remaining Voorde drones made as they moved away to other parts of the ship.
***
Omerio cautiously slowed his fast trading ship well away from any objects in the system that might hold an ambush. He was well aware that at least one Tilmud admiral knew entirely too much about the young Barus trader, and would not hesitate to eliminate him if he could get his massive paws on him. The Vorinne envoy had been specific about finding out information about the unknown ship, and also knew nothing about his other reason for entering the star system. Omerio had no intention of informing the envoy of anything more than he needed to about anything.
‘The trick is to know what to keep silent about.’ He thought dispassionately.
Ensuring the stealth system on his ship was fully functional, Omerio began passive scans as the ship slowly moved over to the last known location of his surveillance probe. The traces he was getting about the star system from his own ship’s sensors proved very interesting. Apparently the Trader ship had stayed in this system for an extended period during which it had encountered another ship.
Omerio tentatively identified the second ship as a Jerecab freighter. He noted that two ships appeared to have gone down to land on the surface of the second planet, and from what Omerio could tell had stayed on the planet for an extended period.
‘That does not make sense’ Omerio thought to himself. ‘Captain Narindestat was keen to leave this system in days.’
The trace of the mysterious ship trace he had discovered earlier had returned and then followed the Jerecab ship from this system. As his ship had finally reached the probe, Omerio had surmised that these events had happened when the Trader ship had already left. The probe was now at a low power setting, but was still fully functional, a status he could verify when the probe was finally in his ship’s hold.
Omerio did not even pause to scan the results from the probe. He quickly reversed course and the ship accelerated for few hours at high velocity into the outskirts of the star system. Selecting an ice ball with several others nearby, Omerio moved his ship between the icy planetoids and he soon powered down the ship’s drive.
After activating a continuous scan of the surrounding areas of space, he then ensured that his ship’s stealth system remained active. Omerio finally took the chance to order a meal from the ship’s small auto galley. Omerio had soon settled down for a leisurely read of the data his probe had recovered, both for the Trader ship, and also the strange earlier ship. For the next several hours, the well trained scientific mind of the former Barus space fleet officer was amazed at the new information laid out before his eyes.
***
Steve, Samantha and Dan, all wearing snorkels and flippers, swam leisurely around the edge of the heavily built sea pen off the east coast of Malaysia. Frequently one of them would dive down several metres, and use their underwater cameras to take photos of the enormous school of juvenile snapper that milled calmly around the centre of the sea pen. The three partners had earlier visited the equally massive dhufish sea pen a few kilometres north that included lesser numbers of juvenile dhufish.
Dan was still working on increasing the lesser numbers of dhufish in the sea pen. But he was always pointing out that Australian researchers had known for fifty years that dhufish were notoriously difficult to breed. Dan considered that their partnership, in conjunction with the Malaysian consortium, had achieved the best results ever in raising this difficult to breed species.
The aid missions by the Aurora Discovery to Irian Jaya and other parts of Indonesia, as well as to Malaysia had progressed well since Steve had the ship upgraded in Perth two months earlier. The ship now had a decent helicopter that had proven invaluable in ferrying goods ashore for the aid missions. The Lotus Marai was already halfway back to Geraldton to refuel, and Steve was taking the Aurora Discovery back to Australia this evening after they had enjoyed a final meal with Mr Lee senior and his family.
After the three partners had finished taking their photos, they got out of the water and threw towels around themselves. Gyuan Lee had since raced up to the sea pen in one of his runabouts and had spoken hurriedly to the sea pen supervisor. The Australians were just about to take their own runabout back to their nearby ship, when Gyuan raced over to speak to them as well.
‘Steve, one of the service divers at the sea pen further north has made an interesting discovery and we thought that with your navy ba
ckground we should tell you about it.’
Steve listened with new interest as Gyuan stated further.
‘We understand that authorities around the world for the last ten years have specified that any unknown objects taken from the ocean should be forwarded to them for careful study.’
Steve got Gyuan to join them in his faster runabout and they all made the quick journey back to the dhufish sea pen. The runabout was soon tied up next to the aquaculture support barge. Within minutes Steve and his excited crew were carefully handling a long black curved panel about four metres long. Dan accessed his satellite linked tablet pc and checked for reliable information about what they had in front of them. Samantha saw Dan now go still and look at them both in amazement.
‘Dan, you are saying that this panel is an unknown object that the authorities are interested in finding?’
Dan nodded to them speechless for a moment, and an excited Steve took up the conversation.
‘Hey look at the weight of this panel, is about a third of the weight of a carbon fibre panel of similar size we would see on navy equipment, and it is extremely rigid as well. There is some discolouration at the forward end, but no scouring from being in the ocean for what must have been several years.’
After he quickly called Mr Lee senior for several minutes via satellite phone, Steve regrettably cancelled the evening meal ashore. Steve then offered to take the panel back to Australia after spending another two days searching for any additional panels. The crew of Aurora Discovery spent the next two days searching the sea floor around the sea pen for several hundred yards and found another panel.
Gyuan Lee was later delivered back to the Aurora Discovery, as he was journeying with them to Australia to inspect the sea pens at Geraldton and Albany. Mr Lee senior himself came aboard to see his son off, and they enjoyed a hasty arranged seafood dinner with good Australian wine that included some of their own aquaculture produce. After dinner Steve and his crew took Mr Lee and his son to see the two strange panels, now guarded by two of Steve’s former navy crew in the equipment storage section. Mr Lee senior was suddenly sombre as he viewed the panels and spoke to Steve.
‘So this is when the nightmare began according to the US authorities.’
Steve nodded his agreement as he studied the panels again, pointing out what little they had learned of them by fitting them together.
‘Now you can see they would enclose a large cylinder roughly a metre across if the other two panels are the same shape. The shape reminds me of a missile shroud for some reason, including the fact that the front of these panels seem to have been heated to a very high temperature.’
The other people present now became sombre as they looked over the panels, and remembered the enormous loss of life associated with these objects. For several nights during the sea voyage back to Perth, Steve and his crew would closely examine the objects. They would take photos and material samples, and continue to be amazed by the implications of the existence of these strange panels.
***
Gindane paced her quarters, and thought about what she had read from the reports of the two junior engineering technicians, and also had read from the ship’s data library. The sequence of events was what had attracted the Vorinne envoy’s interest during the trial. Indeed the envoy had directly charged the surviving engineers in having known and handled the vials that found their way aboard the bio probes.
The junior engineers to their credit had stuck to their strong defence of not knowing anything about the vials in the probes. They insisted they had only helped Wanerio load the probes into the launching the probes when they returned from their lunch. At the time Omerio and the two Cephrit judges had not been really involved in the questioning of the female engineers. This was a development that Gindane had attributed to their previous questioning in earlier days of the trial.
Acting on a hunch, Gindane accessed the investigative data that the judges had supplied to her under Cephrit law after the trial was concluded. The electronic notes for the data was keyed a different colour for each of the three judges reporting. She knew though that the Vorinne envoy could exercise her discretion and not leave any notes due to her eminent rank amongst the judges. If the actions of the envoy as chief judge for a day had in turn rankled the two Cephrit judges, that was something no one had been able to establish or would discuss for obviously powerful reasons.
Gindane accessed the electronic notes from the Cephrit station master and referenced them back to the reports of the trial. When the report for the late senior engineer was tabled the station master had added a reference to an acolyte that had been removed for accessing restricted parts of the star base. Gindane looked at the time stamp for the reference on her ships computer that retained a copy of general unrestricted news for Cephrit Star Base 31 spanning over several years.
‘There it was’ thought Gindane with considerable chagrin.
The Deltas Vass acolyte, an older Barus that worked in the administration section of the star base, had been convicted of criminal trespass several years ago. He had been heavily fined and then sent back to Barus space in disgrace.
‘Not unlike my own situation.’ thought Gindane sourly.
The second Cephrit had also been a judge in the short trial of the acolyte, and Gindane accessed his electronic notes as well. But after reading the brief notes for two minutes the researcher was only further confused.
‘So what does the reference to the Dradfer mean?’ The researcher re-read the second Cephrit’s vague reference, but she could see no cross connection with the senior technician in particular, and her own later trial at all.
Gindane started looking at other sections of the Cephrit judges trial notes, and was getting nowhere fast. One of the Cephrit judges had written ‘Tilmud vendetta’ at one point as only two words with no reference.
‘Possibly referring to one of the Tilmud admiral’s explosive exchanges…’ thought Gindane.
At a later point in her trial the station master had written a comment relating to the research ships trip back to star base 31. He had stated that the method of Omerio’s at the trial was to be kept secret. Now Gindane’s curiosity was truly stirred and she accessed the electronic trial notes set aside by Omerio.
First she looked at the reference to the dead engineer, but was soon disappointed in that only two words, ‘Life Chapter’, appearing in Omerio’s notes section for that reference. Gindane sat back and thought about this revelation, as literally ‘Life Chapter’ meant peaceful political and social dissent.
So what was the link between the acolyte and the dead senior engineer? Especially as the engineer had been sworn to secrecy when he was retained for the mission?’
The Vorinne envoy had later markedly changed the direction of the trial after her eerie initial assessment of the junior engineers. Gindane was well aware of the change of trial direction, and indeed grateful of the change, as it had resulted in limited punishment from the powerful envoy.
However Gindane did not understand the why of the changed trail outcome, especially when the previous Tilmud judge was within days of executing Gindane and her crew. She was now sure that the trip back to Professor Elysius and the rest of the research expedition would not being boring. Gindane again sat down at her console in her quarters, and let her exceptional analytical mind review all the information she had in front of her.
***
Captain Narindestat stalked his hangar deck in cold anger. His invective at the Maveen lead probe fastened to the deck in his cargo hold had been met with cool indifference on the part of the lead probe. The infernal device had just stared at him via the metre long blue vision strip and remained silent. The captain looked over his notes, rubbed his cheek tattoo by habit, and began again to lecture the probe.
‘Now surely you can understand my request for assistance, several of my crew, including a couple of my best engineers, have been killed by the Voorde infestation. We are low on all the consumables that we organic life
forms need to survive, and we cannot just dock anywhere with the Voorde infestation on our ship.’
The captain paused and continued on again after a moment.
‘We are not asking the Maveen to destroy the Voorde infestation. We merely ask you to help us detect them so that we can destroy them.’
The Maveen lead probe merely looked at him again with that frigid stare from the blue vision strip and replied in a cool electronic voice.
‘We are not concerned with the limitations of your lifecycle captain, and we wish that you only honour our travelling agreement.’
The captain seriously considered, but abandoned the option of leaving the Maveen probes behind in interstellar space. He also toyed with the very poor choice of shooting the Maveen lead probe with his blaster. Still struggling for calm, Captain Narindestat became aware of Kureldestat and Garendestat striding across the hold towards him. The captain suppressed a further groan of annoyance and spoke.
‘Lieutenant, I asked not be disturbed as I speak to the lead probe, what do you want?’ The lieutenant calmly looked over the Maveen lead probe, which totally ignored him, before replying to the captain.
‘Sir, sneak ship three has returned with all orders completed. The safety of the crew has not been affected.’
The captain made motions for silence, and mentally thanked his son for his nous. But he pointed at the Maveen probe as he spoke again.
‘Thank you lieutenant, please return to the bridge immediately. I will be along shortly. Kureldestat, please stay for a moment.’
As the lieutenant calmly strode away, Captain Narindestat again spoke to the lead probe.
‘Well one of my ships has returned and it has been accompanied by a ship piloted by the station master of Cephrit 31.’
The Maveen lead probe came alive with the news, with navigation lights appearing, and sensors also extending from the top one third of the probe. The other probes next to the lead probe also opened their blue vision slots and thin blue beams of light shone between the probes as they began a conversation. As quickly as the conversation began it was ended and the lead probe spoke again.
