Sojourn
Page 36
Cordelia fed the holo-vid another series of cargo packages, relegating the unused ones to the top of the holo-vid.
One of the engineers belched in approval and snatched a package to fit to the partial assembly.
As Mickey, Cordelia, and the Gotlians worked, much of the bridge audience grew bored and left. Alex was happy to see that Renée was one of them. He’d replayed his stored visuals of the moments before Julien made his comments about her, and he didn’t detect any display of animus. To him, it appeared to be approval.
As the Gotlians worked, Alex and Mickey moved to the command chairs, and Miranda shifted to stand behind Alex.
Julien worked with Cordelia. As the cargo pieces were fitted into place, they tagged the database of material, linking a package to its position in each assembly.
Within three hours, the Gotlians formed multiple configurations with the images that Cordelia displayed. Not every package was used, but the Omnians figured those were material for the inside of the domes or ancillary structures.
The Gotlians stepped back and regarded their handiwork. The images of dome subassemblies spun slowly in the air, and they belched their appreciation of what they’d accomplished. Their tentacles danced and twitched with satisfaction.
Miriam and Luther arrived on the bridge to escort the Gotlians to the traveler and ferry them to their ship.
“Well, Mickey, do you have what you need?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely,” Mickey replied. “I can’t wait to unwrap these packages and see what the Gotlians have brought. But I need to warn you, Alex, it’s going to take a while for engineering to move that cargo.”
Alex smiled and said, “Cordelia, the fleet, please … everyone.”
Cordelia and Julien linked the SADEs and the fleet controllers to network every implant within the fleet.
Mickey added,
Cordelia interjected,
Sa-Foosee notified the leaders and his commander that an Omnian traveler had returned the engineers.
“So soon?” Ba-Geesaa asked.
“The engineers reported that they were successful,” Sa-Foosee replied. “They spoke of manipulating the dome constructs in the air.”
The leaders and the commander glanced at one another. Omnian tech continued to fascinate and confound them.
“It will take the Omnians as many cycles to unload the ship as we did to load it,” Ba-Geesaa commented.
“Apparently not,” Sa-Foosee said. “Telemetry is recording the launch of small ships across the Omnian fleet. I think they’ll have it emptied much sooner.”
Sa-Foosee was correct. Before the fleet’s crews retired for the evening, the last loads of cargo were being carried off the Omnian cargo shuttles and stored aboard the city-ships. They’d left neat piles of packages in the bays of the Gotlian battleship that they’d pulled from cabins, storerooms, and other out-of-the-way places.
When Alex closed the link, Renée, who sat beside him on the couch, asked, “Are you finished?”
“I think so,” Alex replied.
“This is proceeding faster than I thought it would,” Renée remarked.
“I agree,” Alex said.
“We finish this project … then what?” Renée asked.
“We deliver the Sojourn and the Guardian to Haraken,” Alex replied.
“I want to spend some time there,” Renée said.
Alex pressed his lips against her cheek and murmured, “That can be arranged.” Then pulling back and considering his options, he said, “Maybe we can use a Trident squadron as escort and allow the rest of the fleet to sail for Omnia. Our crews deserve to go home.
“What about the others … Harakens and Méridiens?” Renée asked.
“Their leaves to visit home will have to be rotational until I understand what we’ve unleashed in the federacy,” Alex replied.
The last thing Alex did before Renée and he retired for the evening was to tell Julien to comm Di-Orsoo and inform the leader that his battleship was free to be boarded.
* * *
The Sojourn’s shuttle never stopped its daily routine. Each day, the survey team directed Willem toward more advantageous sites. The sixth day brought the Gotlians fortune.
The Gotlian survey team stared at the holo-vid, while Willem related the depth and sounding data. They conversed excitedly, hurried to the ramp’s end, gazed at the water, and returned inside.
“They’re preparing to dive,” Willem said to the Harakens.
Gotlian heads, which is all the Harakens had seen to date, had a vaguely humanoid resemblance if you could ignore the lack of ears, the absence of hair, the presence of scales, and the mass of tentacles hanging as if the individuals were bearded. If it wasn’t for the intelligence in their eyes, which was unmistakable, it would have been difficult for humans to accept them as sentient.
As the Gotlians stripped out of their suits, the distinction blurred even more. Their bodies were muscular in a tubular manner. Thick torsos ended in a pair of heavy legs that ended in broad feet. Skin webbed the long digits together. Their arms were similar in structure and ended in webbed hands. Feet and hands possessed sharp, short claws. Along their backs were a series of spines that were also webbed together. They sprung up after being freed from the suits.
Before the Gotlians could jump, Willem halted them. He said, pointing to Bethany, Smitty, and Yoyo, “These three will accompany you.”
While the Gotlians had undressed, the three Harakens had climbed into their environment suits.
“Too slow,” a Gotlian said.
The suited Harakens picked up spears that ended in enlarged tubes. They were improvised weapons, courtesy of Z. Each spear fired darts from the tube. The dart was attached to an energy crystal. Anything the dart hit received a shock.
Willem explained the divers’ purpose and their weaponry. His explanation created consternation among the Gotlians.
“Harm or kill?” one of the surveyors asked, pointing at a spear.
“Frighten away,” Willem replied.
The Gotlians knew the dangers that lurked beneath the surface. On Gotl, there’d been no great competition for the superior species position. It was the reason they’d never developed offensive or defensive weaponry.
The survey team discussed the pros and cons of the arrangement. They’d intended to use their speed to evade the water’s denizens, but it occurred to them that the eleven who’d been lost had probably had the same thought. The spears of the human represented a better opportunity for protection.
“They ride,” a Gotlian said, indicating his back.
Bethany, Smitty, and Yoyo eyed the tall, sharp spines on the Gotlians’ backs.
Realizing what the humans stared at, a Gotlian snapped his spines flat. He nudged his companions’ muscular arms, and they collapsed theirs.
The survey team gestured at the Harakens to follow, and they leapt off the ramp. They arced out
over the water and entered it with a minimal amount of splash.
Bethany regarded Smitty and Yoyo, shrugged, ran, and jumped. Immediately, Smitty and Yoyo rushed to follow her.
The weight of the Harakens’ tanks counterbalanced the air in their suits. It enabled neutral buoyancy, and they ceased their descent about eight meters down.
Bethany and Smitty watched Yoyo fan her arms to rotate in the water to look for the Gotlians, and they imitated her.
Moving swiftly in their natural environment, the Gotlians swam up from the bottom. They slowed to settle the Harakens on their backs and then shot forward.
The Harakens were forced to lean forward to prevent being swept off the Gotlians. They gripped the stout bodies with their legs and kept their heads close to those of the Gotlians.
The light dimmed around them, as the Gotlians dove to the bottom, which was about thirty meters down.
Smitty’s Gotlian approached the rocky bottom. He scraped at it with his sharp claws and was unable to dislodge any significant piece of it. Circling the rocks, a meter-round mouth of teeth shot toward them, and Smitty reflexively fired a dart.
The giant tubeworm received a jolt, when the dart embedded in its mouth. It quickly shrank back into its shell.
Smitty’s Gotlian reached a clawed hand back and patted Smitty’s leg.
Bethany and Yoyo had similar encounters with worms and other entities. In each case, their reflexes were fast enough to protect the Gotlians and themselves.
After a thorough investigation of the bottom, the Gotlians, with their riders, swam for the surface. Bethany hurriedly checked her app, which wasn’t recommending decompression, and she signaled the others the all clear.
On Bethany’s signal, Orly dropped the ramp as far down as it would go. He allowed the traveler to touch the wave tops and the ramp to dip into the water.
Willem and the other Harakens hauled Bethany, Smitty, and Yoyo aboard.
Then the Gotlians waved them back. They briefly disappeared beneath the surface. Then they exited the water fast enough to land upright on the ramp.
“That’s impressive,” Ginny commented.
“Any problems?” Willem asked, while the Gotlians donned their suits, and the Harakens removed their helmets.
“Not really. Unless you consider worms with meter-wide mouths of teeth reaching up from the bottom to eat you,” Smitty remarked.
“I encountered one of the gelatinous creatures,” Bethany added. “I couldn’t believe how big it was.”
“A giant shelled reptile, the type with the four limbs, investigated us, but it was only curious, and it swam on,” Yoyo said.
After the Gotlians donned their suits, they sat on the end of the ramp and dipped their legs into the water to charge their suits. When they returned inside, they approached their three protectors.
Grasping their riders by the shoulders, they uttered deep, elongated belches, and the Harakens got good whiffs of partially digested Gotlian food.
“You’ve been paid great compliments for your efforts,” Willem said, after listening to the words of the primary surveyor. “They promise to tell their leaders of your services. They believe none of them would have survived the dive without your aid.”
“I could have forgone the thanks,” Yoyo replied, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.
“Did you find what you sought?” Willem asked the survey team.
The Gotlians’ enthusiastic responses and gestures at the holo-vid confirmed to the RT team, without translation, that they’d found their installation site.
Willem locked in the traveler’s coordinates, using the usual source points.
After Teague, Ginny, and Ian recovered the probes, Willem signaled Orly. The pilot lifted the traveler off the water, spun the ship to sweep the ramp clear of seawater, closed it, and made for the Gotlians’ ship.
-33-
Domes
Mickey stood in the center of a Freedom’s bay. He was surrounded by his engineering teams and a number of additional SADEs. In front of him stood the same two Gotlian engineers who’d identified the cargo parts.
The Gotlian’s cargo packages were unwrapped and stacked by type and expected assembly number.
Engineering had installed a holo-vid, and the Gotlians had identified the first substructure to assemble. It was a dome’s base, with legs that would rest on the bottom.
Mickey had expected a metal base, but when the SADEs originally hefted the packages, they pronounced them too light for metal. Instead, the material turned out to be a honeycomb ceramic.
“Resistant to seawater corrosion,” Miriam translated from a Gotlian, when he tapped the strut.
The base allowed a series of partial constructs before the units were too bulky to be transported to the surface. The Gotlians directed the assembly process, which was simpler than expected. The ceramic struts, legs, and crossbeams linked together and locked into place.
When the partial constructs were ready, everyone vacated the bay, and suited crews shoved the assemblies out the bay doors. Freighter crews, riding sleds, hooked the constructs to slings, which were strapped around traveler hulls.
The Sojourn exploratory shuttle waited at the installation site. This time, an additional cargo shuttle waited nearby. It was crowded with security personnel, who were armed with Z’s spears.
The first assembly unit arrived, and Ginny and Ian launched their aqua-drones.
A senior Gotlian engineer used the exploration shuttle’s holo-vid to direct the placement of the traveler’s load. Willem relayed the instructions to the Haraken pilot.
Gotlians dove into the water, and the second shuttle circled the site, dropping off the security team, which included Yoyo.
The first traveler’s two-legged unit was lowered into the water, and it was moved around until its broad feet found level placement.
When the next assembly arrived, Mickey was curious as to how the Gotlians would connect it to the first. The sea bed was hard rock, which would make leveling the two units impossible without excavation.
The Gotlians didn’t bother. They planted the new assembly next to the first and then swung the exterior leg until the unit leveled. They simply ignored the concept of attaching these substructures in a predefined shape or at the same height.
As they continued installing the two-legged units, Mickey thought it resembled an asynchronous shape, each unit finding a level position, as the final assembly marched around in a rough circle.
Aboard the Freedom, a second group of Gotlians and engineers launched beams for the dome’s bottom support. They were of the same material, a honeycomb ceramic. The beams were transported to the surface, lowered into the water, and attached to the base.
Once again, the Gotlians didn’t bother with fitted accuracy. The beams extended past the bases’ upright struts and were locked into place on them. After the newly installed beams created a level base for the dome, more beams were laid across those to form the dome’s floor.
The work under the surface attracted the attention of sea creatures. The extraordinary-sized, finned, and shelled reptiles came close to bite or nuzzle the ceramic beams. One attempted to test the flesh of a Gotlian, but security intervened.
The massive jelly creatures were another matter. Security frequently called to their traveler for replacement tubes. The amorphous monsters flinched, when struck by the darts, but weren’t often deterred until they were hit several times. Unfortunately, their simplistic biological demands drove them
to return to where they’d sensed food.
At one point, Bethany, who led the security team, called a halt to the day’s efforts and ordered everyone out of the water. The Gotlians were upset about the interruption of their progress, and they belched and burped their protests to Willem. The SADE explained that it had become too dangerous to proceed.
The Gotlians’ objections were ended when Willem told them they were welcome to continue their work without the security team present. Having witnessed the number, size, and voracity of many of the water creatures, they quickly acquiesced. The fact that none of them had been eaten, which defied the odds, was evidence of the Omnians’ excellent service.
The Sojourn shuttle stayed over the construction site to allow Teague and Ginny to recover the probes, while Ian, who had done most of the morning’s work, napped.
The laying of the final floor struts was delayed for two days to allow the sea creatures to move on. When work resumed, the denizens returned quickly and in greater numbers.
Anticipating trouble, Z fabricated belt packs, which held multiple replacement tubes for the spears. Work slowed even as the final beams were installed. The finned reptiles cruised around the site and bumped into the swimmers. The size of the flippers made an accidental brush with them a dangerous encounter.
Yoyo inserted herself between a Gotlian and one of the finned reptiles. She used the blunt end of her spear to nudge it away. Distracted by the creature, neither the Gotlian nor she saw an eel-like creature’s approach. Its enormous, oval, sucker mouth swallowed the pair. Then with a whip of its long, slender body, it was gone.
Willem relayed Yoyo’s initial and last positions before his ship’s controller lost contact. The pilot of the security traveler lined up on the vector and shot after the creature. Two travelers exited an overhead Trident and plunged toward the planet to assist in the pair’s recovery.
The trio of travelers located Yoyo’s implant signal, but the pilots and crews were unsure what to do. The creature continued to swim about ten meters below the surface at a fast pace.