by David Buck
A distraught Narindestat sunk back into his chair.
‘Garendestat, Garendestat please respond.’
As his frantic crew managed to reactivate the shields and slow the inrush of water, the captain sat with his head in his hands and repeatedly moaned.
‘My son, he is my son.’
The still form of Lieutenant Garendestat hung limply a hundred meters below the research rig as it slowly ascended to the surface. Inside the research rig, the three surviving Voorde drones gathered all the eggs that were still alive and patiently waited.
***
Steve and Dan had been joined by Mark, the helicopter pilot, just before midday, and the three men had flown in the Bell helicopter south west from the Aurora Discovery for a short distance. The men had been discussing the earlier 10am news briefing, first as they had tested the microphone minutes after leaving the ship. The Aurora Discovery had received the test message and the helicopter had flown away with the men discussing the news again.
Mark had even got into the discussion as he had heard that other countries were incensed that the US Navy had made a unilateral decision on behalf of all mankind to attack the alien ships. Steve answered that full diplomatic pressure was being brought to bear on the US Government, and a unified response, hopefully peaceful, should be the outcome.
The sharp eyed pilot then reported both a disturbance on the ocean surface several kilometers in front of them, and a larger object in the sky about fifteen kilometers distant. The larger ship sized object rapidly vanished north into the distance, and in the ocean disturbance a large rectangular object, not unlike a submersible erupted onto the surface. Steve looked at the object and noted the inflatable collar and the modular design. He also noted two big cables running into the water from the object and several portholes along the sides. Steve radioed the Aurora Discovery and gave orders for the ship to come to their location. Quickly the pilot lowered the underwater microphone down, and once it was underwater, Steve started to speak.
‘We are sorry for the attack on your ships as we are not a unified people. Even now our world leaders seek to resolve your presence peacefully.’
As Mark slowly flew the helicopter over to the floating object, Steve kept repeating the message. In the hold of the main Trader ship, the Maveen lead probe came online, and the blue visor opened as the probe considered the underwater message relayed from the bridge of the Trader ship.
***
The crew member sitting at the navigation console reported to Captain Narindestat.
‘Sir we are not far off our attempt to land on one of the islands.’
Just minutes earlier the crew had slowly taken the ship north after controlling the flooding in the hold. Even now the main cargo hold was still heavy flooded and the three patrol teams, minus Lieutenant Garendestat, had cornered and killed the few remaining Voorde drones that had fled above the inrushing water. The crew noted that the fight seemed to have gone out of the drones, and the burnt black blotches had appeared again on their bodies.
‘Something in this world’s oceans definitely did not agree with the Voorde.’
The captain, mourning his son, thought glumly.
The weapons officer then had spoken.
‘Sir, a single aerial vehicle like the ones we have seen before is approaching just to the south of us. They appear to be transmitting a message to us via an underwater microphone.’
The message in the strange language of the humans was replayed on the bridge, and the captain listened closely but did not understand the message. The Maveen lead probe in the hold now spoke on another communications line to the bridge.
‘Captain, I understand that the humans will not attack us again.’
The captain considered the advice in silence, even as he mourned, and he then gave orders for the ship to be readied to fly in the atmosphere for the short trip to the nearby islands.
***
Admiral Biruldesec was in his usually foul mood again that morning. He was eagerly awaiting reports on the secret special project he was working on with four ships. The project involved three frigates and his special ship, even though the ships would not be in a position to report to him for at least a week. Also Admiral Baredio, a jumped up Barus Fleet officer, was still demanding an explanation. The Barus admiral wanted a report on the events involving Tilmud ships in a Tilmud star system destroying a Jerecab ship contaminated by the Voorde. Admiral Biruldesec considered that despite his security precautions there must be a leak somewhere in his chain of command.
The Tilmud admiral felt that the Barus admiral, who he had previously met and formed a mutual dislike with, should hold his breath and go jump out of an airlock. Publicly however, the interaction between the two was governed by strict protocols backed by the senior races dating over thousands of years. So the admiral merely again replied that he was too busy.
Admiral Baredio also wanted Tilmud patrols to resume in this area of the Carinae sector, as if implying that the Tilmud admiral was not doing his appointed duty. The Barus admiral especially wanted Admiral Biruldesec to send a patrol to a system called Sol, as a Trader ship had been reported entering the system. The star system name looked familiar and after accessing the details, the Tilmud admiral foul mood increased a couple of notches further.
‘The planet the Barus researchers contaminated with their foul epidemic is the third world in that system.’
He thought acridly as he remembered his humiliation during the trial. The admiral sat back to think his way through this issue further, noting with a rise in his mood, that Admiral Baredio had not specified the number of ships to do the patrol of this system.
‘Good, two Gakjunk lizards killed with one spear.’ He thought to himself.
His younger brother, Tanuldesec, had infuriated him recently, though it was poor form even in Tilmud society to kill a sibling. He also still needed his brother to bring along his eldest son’s naval career. Hopefully his brother would make errors on this mission and his son would get his first command. Now with satisfaction evident, the Admiral Biruldesec crafted an acknowledgement of Admiral Baredio’s patrol request, and then sent orders for his brother to take only two frigates to the Sol system.
***
Chapter 13
The Maveen probes lay still in the hold of the Trader ship and conferred with one another silently. To the passing Trader crew they did not make a sound, but between themselves plenty was being discussed via their blue communications lasers. The largest Maveen object in the hold, a sleek cylinder that took up an entire wall of the hold, remained dormant, and would do so until summoned awake by the lead probe.
The lead probe was senior probe by over four thousand years, and usually got things done how it intended them to be done. However one of the junior probes, probe three on this mission, was quite adamant about concerns it had with their disabling of the human surface fleet. Only the active argument that ‘greater force would have been needed later to protect themselves, with the real possibility that the Traders would renege on their deal’, had finally swayed the concerns of probe three.
Probe three had also submitted a sensor log along with other logs that had been submitted by the other probes. His particular task had to be to monitor the plateau and the surrounding depths. Another probe passed over the details of the sensor log, with consternation evident as it did a series of deep scans on the log and probe three for good measure. Probe three now fell silent as dictated by protocol.
‘Let the other probes come round to a viewpoint I have already decided was plausible…’ evaluated the probe quietly.
The other probes continued their discussion.
‘Look at the trails off the edge of the plateau, then the kension analysis of the deep basin terrain….’
Probe four intoned, usually the sceptic of the probe cluster. Another probe, probe two, still sceptical, then looked yet again at the latest sensor log data.
‘The trails are old, but I think that more than one of
them is here. And they vanish towards to mid ocean depths as you would expect. The humans could never detect them directly, not for many years yet with their current technology.’
Finally there was probe five, who had done the latest sea floor scans as they travelled north east across the deep water approaches to a massive underwater canyon, but had remained largely silent. Probe five finally offered these scans up for analysis with no comment. In turn the other probes now scanned both probe five and the scan logs respectively for damage and corruption. Satisfied that key data was now present the probes now remained silent and awaited input from the lead probe.
The lead probe drew attention yet again to the specifics of the star system they were currently located, with certain items highlighted for comment. The tactic was not lost on the other probes. By tacit agreement none of the probes would dare voice the word that best described their discovery. They hardly dared think it possible, and as they fell silent thinking essentially the same thing, the lead probe took the opportunity to ask for consensus.
‘Are we all agreed then, we take the obvious course of action? We can still resume our earlier mission when the Traders leave and take us into space. Indeed I will stipulate that to the Trader captain.’
One by one the Maveen probes gave their assent, and the lead probe accessed basic control software seldom used in many thousands of years to change the specifics of the current mission. The override was accepted, indeed had to be accepted, otherwise the probes broke their own ancient laws. The lead probe knew that if the decision process was flawed and an error had been made, then the entire cluster of Maveen probes in the cargo hold risked being disassembled and used for parts. 'That is if we survived to report about the mistake…' the lead probe dryly evaluated.
The other probes each submitted the altered state of their command codes to the lead probe, and got the lead probes own changed codes in confirmation. The probes now went silent again with the decision made. The Maveen lead probe then placed a call to Captain Narindestat.
‘Captain we wish to leave the ship for a few days. We will return in time for our departure, note that you must take us from this world when you leave. You will not search for us, call for us or use any active scans on this world.’
***
Queen Angwene and her daughters had remained well hidden as events unfolded to the North. They were in the depths of the Southern Ocean several hundred kilometres from the Naturaliste plateau. The queen was still reviewing the information that her stealthy probes had discovered observing first the downed Trader ship, and then the one sided battle that had later transpired with the unfortunate human fleet.
Towards the end of the strange battle, wonder of wonders, six of the eternal servants had appeared from the Trader ship. She was saddened that the Traders had lost two of their sneak ships and was hopeful they could still successfully leave this world. Automatically the queen had shutdown her stealthy probes on detecting the Maveen, but in hindsight she was well aware that this was fruitless. The probes would not even need to use their powerful active scanners to identify the queen’s secret.
No doubt the Maveen probes would have scanned the plateau and the sea floor in deeper areas as they swam north east. The probes would only have to cross the outskirts of the Perth Canyon, as the humans called the offshore underwater valley off the coast from one of their big cities, to realise the full import of where they had landed.
The queen was both elated and concerned, elated that old friends were very much alive after all this time in a hostile galaxy. But she was also concerned both about the status of the probes, their involvement with the Traders, and their partial assault on the human surface fleet. Her daughters sat quietly back in the gloom of the dark depths and waited respectfully for their mother to advise them of her decisions. Angwene knew she had to reassure them.
‘Daughters, these probes are our greatest friends. Now while I know this news is unplanned and you all are still young, it is not unwelcome. We must ensure they are ready to see us, so we must let them seek us out, if they are permitted to do so.’
One of her daughters asked a nervous question.
‘They may not stay here long, or to be more accurate the Traders might not stay long. Should we not get closer but not too close? The more time we that have with the eternal servants the greater the potential return.’
The queen listened with silent pride as she prepared to give her orders. Her second eldest daughter Seliandre, was indeed showing a fine mind and would one day make a superb queen. First there was the matter of the two downed trader ships.
‘Cliade and Armuen, you two will go to our facilities and only bring the following items, nothing more nothing less, here please.’
The queen listed the items carefully, and her two youngest daughters immediately repeated back the list of items, and then silently swam away to follow her orders.
‘The rest of us will move to this point.’
The inbuilt maps of the daughters came alive with a location they would swim together to await the Maveen probes. Quietly, as they swam east and deep, the queen evaluated the potential risks from the Maveen. But she considered the aspect of the probes arrival with some hope for her own plans to leave this world could be improved. She also wondered what the ancient Maveen probe in the makeshift cradle back at her main facility would make of the new arrivals.
***
Commander Jane Walker sat in her day cabin and looked through the information in front of her. The two Anzac frigates were on their way up to the mid-west coast when a report arrived on HMAS Sydney. A cargo ship heading towards Fremantle had recently witnessed a one hundred meter space ship that was airborne, and was travelling north east at just ninety knots. The cargo ship position was just south west of the southern approaches to the Abrolhos islands group.
‘Steve was certainly right about much of what has happened.’
She thought to herself as she gave orders for the two frigates to head for the eastern side of the Abrolhos Islands. The commander knew that the Fleet West would change her orders based on the latest report. So she sent a message to them advising she was taking the frigates to the Abrolhos Islands, but the ships would keep their distance awaiting further orders. Jane also sent the helicopters on both ships forward to with strict orders to observe the alien ships at a distance.
‘We don’t want to be mistaken for hostiles after the efforts of the US 5th fleet.’ She considered to herself.
The reports of the battle the Australian ships had witnessed from a distance had been well received by Fleet West. Also well received were the opinions she had obtained prior to the incident from both Steve and indirectly, from Douglas Stoneham. At the request of Fleet West, Douglas had called left a message, and Jane had called him back to discuss the issue further to see if they had omitted or left anything out at all. The discussion then had turned to the alien ships themselves, the view that was gaining ground was that using force against the aliens would not be attempted again.
However the US fleet command had been entirely non committal about not using force again on the aliens. Jane would like to talk to Steve again soon, and messages she had from his ship was that he was on a helicopter flight with an underwater microphone. She worried that if the aliens did turn up in Steve’s location that he would prove correct in how to deal with them.
***
Lieutenant Garendestat was dimly aware of his surroundings as he awoke to a buzzing tone, and was then acutely aware of his left arm and shoulder as he finally tried moving them. He hung upside down in deep water from a heavy tie down cable used to secure freight in the cargo hold. Most of the strain on his body from the cable going taut had been taken by the solid casing of the left leg of his space suit, now covered in two or three loops of cable.
‘Otherwise I would be already dead…’ He observed.
He knew that he would have either plummeted to the sea floor and his suit would have imploded, or he would have lost his arm and then dro
wned when the space suit flooded. Undoubtedly the limited flex of the striated cable helped to a certain extent as he estimated he had fallen one hundred metres.
Painfully and slowly, he checked the radio status, and it was not any good at all he considered with real despair. The heavy cable had ruptured the electronics, but the backing plate for the link on the arm of the suit possibly had saved his life when the cable jammed into it. He next checked the air and water, and the buzzing tone was explained, his suit was low on air and he had less than an hour left. Garendestat manually keyed the command for the limited extra buoyancy reserves available then ensured that his suit lights were on. He evaluated that the sneak ships should find him easily enough with his suit transponder and his lights on if they were nearby.
As he was now moving a bit the cable started to slip again, and he had the presence of mind to first loop the cable in his equipment belt on the space suit. Garendestat then secured the cable with a tool grip holder. This took quite an effort with only one useable arm, but eventually he could rest for a minute or two.
‘Unorthodox use for a tool grip holder…’ He thought as he slowly turned for the surface and began to pull himself up the cable with one hand.
***
In her clearing the Deltas Vass matriarch patiently viewed the reports of the developments of the distant reaches of the Carinae sector. She trilled a sharp note of concern and her drones looked around anxiously, then went still and silent to show the deference and respect that they have for her. The matriarch felt unhappy about a specific report that mentions a Trader ship had entered the Sol system, with both haven and quarantine status current.
