He went into flight mode and said, “Our sensors don’t penetrate that blue mountain... I had to fire to prevent them to ready their Antimatter Bazooka. Those things could ruin our day.”
There was still silence on the channel, and I went into flight mode as well. I didn’t blame Har-Hi for firing without asking. Kermac line blasters could not make a dent in a Quasimodo, much less our shields, but a few hits of their AM Bazookas could wear down our shields fast.
The possibility that the crew of the escape pod had not been killed but found shelter inside that mountain thing was now quite likely and with that was also the knowledge that they had the Translocator manual. We flew fast and with pre-programmed evasive patterns close to the still-smoking cave entrance.
In Shea’s estimate, the blue mountain before us was about eight kilometers high and had a base width of sixteen kilometers. That gave us a potential volume of 2,300 cubic kilometers and, if that thing was hollow, lots of room for millions of Kermac.
Now close to the mountain, I scanned the material and, dependable as an Ult Chronometer, Shea came back saying, “The material is similar to the blue rocks on the Kermac Cruiser and those on Little Hell. It is mostly crystalline silicone, dense layers of heavy metals such as lead and gold. The bluish color is most likely due to a high concentration of the element cobalt. Noteworthy is the presence of large amounts of the biological coenzyme cobalamine, more commonly known as Vitamin B12. Many bacterial and animal life forms use this for nutrition.”
While I listened to Shea’s analysis, I slowly approached the cave entrance, while Har-Hi did the same from the other side. I said to Shea, “Why can’t we scan through that? We should be able to detect life forms, including silicone-based life.”
“I think it is the way the crystalline lattice is structured, but because of that, I am convinced this is a life form.”
“You mean there are life forms inside?”
“No, I am running the data once more through Ship and the xeno data bank on Venus, and I am certain the mountain thing is one single life form.”
While I digested her info, Har-Hi tossed a mini spy drone into the cave entrance. The drone could cloak and was virtually invisible to most scanning equipment.
I dedicated the upper left side of my faceplate to the telemetry of the drone.
Our little spy machine floated through a long straight corridor made of the same bluish material for nearly two kilometers. We noticed the shattered suits and bodies of three more Kermac who could not escape the confined and thus even more devastating AM blast and then entered a large cavern.
The image beamed back to us was overwhelming and frightening. There stood an army of bluish giants, beings with arms, legs, and heads. I estimated there were at least 20,000 of them, looking identical to each other, just like robots. Each of them held one of those bluish football-sized rocks before them in crude-looking hands. Each of them had to be at least four meters tall and at least two meters wide. On the sides of the cavern were more of those round rocks stacked in large piles, but they did not glow and looked broken.
Two Kermac sat on the floor before them with closed eyes and a technical device between them.
Har-Hi said, “What do you say? I take the ten thousand on the left and you the ten thousand on the right? There are certainly enough for both of us.”
I smirked at that and was pondering what to do. These rough-looking stone golems did not move. Did the Kermac perhaps keep them in that state and contained? Would we unleash that army if we killed the Kermac?
Har-Hi said, “I think we are fucked and you might agree with me if you turn!”
I turned and saw at least a hundred of those floating rocks. Before I could do anything, both Har-Hi and I were suddenly pushed inside the cave entrance by an irresistible force. The floating rocks had generated a gravionic focus point inside that pulled us and much debris through that cave corridor. My suit was holding but could not generate enough Arti-Grav to counter this force.
Shea, who was still connected, said with an alarmed tone in her voice, “I am sending the Marines and robots; we will get you out of there.”
Har-Hi and I tumbled before the two Kermac, who were no longer sitting.
One of them clapped his hands and the stone warriors came alive and then he said, “Splendid, two Union fools have stumbled across our special project. It looks like they have translocator cannons with them.”
I managed to get to my feet and said, “That’s right, Whiteface, and you are the first to find out how it is to be shot point blank by one.”
“Ah, but you won’t. You see, we can crush you and your friend to liquid inside your suits. Our friends here have truly mastered the mental control of gravionics. So I suggest you hand over your shoulder cannons and tell us all you know about it. I can start with you and your friend will be very cooperative after seeing you squashed like a rotten fruit.”
“I am going to overload the entire magazine of Translocator bombs!”
The Kermac waved his hand to the stone giants. “Strip them of their suits, Children of the Conck. These are the ones who have abducted your queen and broken many rocks!”
The shoulder cannons and our main TKU twisted and became useless. The Kermac lamented, “You imbecile Olours, that was what we wanted to preserve!”
Our reinforced suits held much better than the Gilgamesh, but our systems were strained to the limits. The immobilizing pressure subsided, enough to take the ax I had fixed to my belt, and Har-Hi managed to pull his chain sword. It was more a gesture of defiance than anything else as we had no hope to defeat them all, but something strange happened. The stone giants stepped back; the floating rocks retreated from us.
The Kermac who had spoken before now hissed, “Enough of this; crush them!”
But no pressure came. The giants tried to step back farther until they ran into each other and had no room to back away from us.
Har-Hi waved his chain sword. “Looks like those boulder things respect axes and swords more than energy weapons.” A rocket launcher popped up from Har-Hi’s wrist. “You Kermac have no idea what a Quasimodo can do!” A pair of mini rockets hissed from the launcher and hit the Kermac device and blew it to twisted bits of metal.
The Kermac who had not spoken before said to his partner, “Wizard of the Project, Wise Sweisweinule. We must negotiate for our lives. We’ve lost control!”
Their natural arrogance was gone. The first one displayed anger and disbelief and the second one was clearly afraid.
The deep voice spoke, and it came from everywhere at the same time, creating a strange echo. “The ONE is awake and has come! Must the Conck now perish?”
The angry Kermac yelled, “You must obey. We are the Gentle Ones from your past. We are the allies you are honorbound to serve, for we are the Oxis. Those are the servants of the Craah-th Darkness. Enemies of the First League! Destroy them!”
I’d had about enough of the Kermac and now that I was free and able to move, I stomped toward him, raised my ax, and said, “I have had about all I can take of you scheming, arrogant bastards. A short while ago, I wondered if there was something redeeming even about your kind.”
He stepped back and pulled his line blaster, but then his face changed into a twisted grimace of horror and the blaster fell out of his hand. He dropped to his knees and whimpered, “Don’t take me, please don’t take me there.”
I felt no remorse and no guilt as I swung the half-moon-shaped antique ax down in a wide swing. Why I was certain I could kill him with such a simple steel weapon, I could not say. He was wearing a Kermac armored suit, after all; it was as if I sliced through air and didn’t feel the slightest resistance as the ax blade slid through his armor, body, and bones.
I whirled around and raised the archaic weapon to end the life of the second, but he had surrendered to Har-Hi. My Dai friend gave me a strange look for a long second and then said, “First, Shea pulls a sword that slices through Ultronit like a hot wire through Ulgan Jel
ly, and now you got an ax that goes through Kermac cerami-weave as if it wasn’t there. I really need to find out where you guys buy your hardware.”
Before I could say something and wonder about that myself, the floating rocks gathered by the cave entrance and Shea, Cirruit, and all my Marines, accompanied by Fenris robots, marched in. Despite the withering gravitation attack, Shea and the others moved unhindered. The Marines, just as precise and fast as the robots, raised their wrist cannons and Shea said, “Give the word, Captain, and we turn this place into a gravel pit.”
Cirruit said, “Shea, Narth, and I figured a way to neutralize their grav-manipulating powers.”
The voice of the mountain thundered with its echo voice, “The day of doom has come to the Conck.”
From between the ranks of the Marines, my Takkian specialist appeared. He, too, wore a battlesuit, but his helmet was open. To him, this environment was obviously not harmful at all. He said, “Captain, may I ask for permission to talk to the Conck?”
“Yes, by all means. If you can shed some light on all this, I will be grateful. I am as much in the dark as we have been before. That Conck isn’t very responsive to questions, it seems.”
“Captain, the voice we hear comes from a Kermac device, and it is very limited to translate the Conck.”
“Go ahead, Specialist Joglur, just don’t start a war. There are still an awful lot of these stone things.”
The Takkian resolutely stepped forward into the center of the cavern and began to sing. It was a strange song that sounded like someone chewing sand while gargling. Despite the strange sound, I found the song’s melody actually quite rhythmic.
Narth silently floated in and moved next to me, and his voice said in my mind, “Shea came to the conclusion that we control and manipulate gravity for a long time and have both the technology and the knowledge. Instead of absorbing the pressure they generate, it is now deflected around us. Takes much less energy and, as you see, works fine.”
“I was actually thinking along the same lines, not that I claim to have Shea’s genius but we deflect and absorb much higher gravs when we go to threshold speed, and the Arti-Gravs of our battleships move millions of tons.”
“She is right; you aren’t as stupid as you always say you are.”
“I do not always—”
Our silent banter was interrupted as the song was answered by the mountain.
Then the Takkian said, “These stone warriors are called the Olours. They are noble warriors of ancient heritage. They forgot the details of their origin, as it is so long ago. If I interpret their timeline correctly, they are as old as the Narth and come from the region we call Downward. They did have brief contact with the Pree, who took seeds of them to create the Takkians and the Takian races, if I understood it all correctly. So, in a wider sense, our religious chant slates were quite correct.
“The Olours move and speak in a stately, glacial pace. Meaning it usually takes them between one to two hundred and of our years to even finish a sentence, and conversations can last millennia. They are the epitome of patience and are usually extremely slow to anger. They have no technology whatsoever. The Olours actually seek just and honorable contact with other races, but since they speak so slow, this was not very successful. They generally have little patience for brutality and the kinds of atrocities other species are so ready to commit.”
He extended his arms and gestured to the ceiling. “This is the Conck, the Mother or the Queen, so to speak, and it is she I am talking to, by the way and not the Olours. This mountain is the mother of this species, and if I can absorb enough energy and if the Olours collect enough base materials, the mountain creates one of those big blue eggs you have seen aboard the T Cruiser and on Little Hell. It happens only once about every 500,000 years, and these blue rocks are called Conck-Stone.”
Our Takkian Specialist managed to mesmerize us with his information and we all listened closely. He made a short pause as he listened to more of the gravel and sand crunching song the mountain sang to him and then continued.
“These Conck-Stones are actually a collection of fifty to sixty individual nodules, those ball-shaped floating rocks. The Olours place them on rich mineral deposits and do so by traveling space, manipulating gravitation. They cannot travel faster than light but can teleport up to one light year, if I get the distances right. Such a jump, however, depletes their energy reserves, and they die if they do not find a feeding ground, such as a planet or an asteroid. If the conditions are right, eventually a new Olour develops. These Conck-Stones are vital to the Olours because they represent the continuation of their race. Anyone who knowingly destroys a Conck-Stone becomes a declared enemy of the Olours and they go to great length to punish a rock-breaker.”
Har-Hi, who held the second Kermac, said, “How did the Kermac fit in?”
Narth said, “Specialist Joglur already asked that question, but the Conck has a very peculiar way of telling things.”
Joglur, who had no neck or a distinctively separated head, moved his left manipulator in the Takkian gesture for yes and said, “I am sorry, Lt. Hi, I am trying to translate and interpret all the things it is telling me and only give you the short version.”
Har-Hi looked embarrassed, shook the Kermac for good measure, and said, “I am sorry for sounding impatient, please go on.”
Our Takkian sang a piece and received a similar answer then he interpreted again. “The Olours were members of an association of space-faring civilizations they call the First League. It was very long ago, even in the time perception of the Olours, and this League was centered on a group of Light Knights and led by an individual named Lord Lumis. The Conck does not know what happened to the League or these knights but there was a war or fight, and it didn’t go well for the League.
“It claims it was rescued from another place before the enemy known to them only as the ONE could destroy the Conck, and brought to this moon by someone it calls the Gentle Ones. The Conck has no recollection what happened, but according to the blue mountain, the Gentle Ones returned very recently, only about one hundred of our years ago. The Gentle Ones reminded the Conck of this rescue and the debt of honor owed and demanded that the Olours serve them, which they, of course, did. The Gentle Ones promised to take the Conck back home after they did the great deed.”
Narth said to me with concern and actual surprise in his voice, “I broke the shield of the Kermac, and they planned to take the Conck near a black hole and use its gravitation manipulating abilities to destroy Narth Prime and then Earth and Sares! These machines are not to control the Conck, but to vastly increase its already enormous powers. The Kermac pretended to be the Gentle Ones and thus secured the cooperation of the Conck.”
The Kermac held by Har-Hi said triumphantly, “We’ll find a way to destroy you humans and your psionic alleys. This is but one project, we have thousands, and we are the masters of psionics. We already breed new Kermac generations with the exact same abilities as these unreliable rocks!”
Har-Hi’s augmented suit fist had crumbled the Kermac armor like paper holding him like that, and he said, “It is very unwise to make such speeches while being held by a Dai.”
I said, “He is stupid, too, revealing their plans like that. I think if we repeat what he said at the Assembly, Admiral Stahl will get any resource he needs. Before you know it, there won’t be any Kermac, period!”
I waved at Pure, the Attikan, who I noticed to be part of the Marine detachment that had arrived and said to him, “Lieutenant, put this Kermac into Zero Stasis and get him out of here.”
To the Takkian, I said, “Did you tell that thing who we are and all that?”
“Yes, ma’am, but if you ask if they are interested in membership, then we have to wait a little. The Olours have just begun the discussion and the Conck does whatever they come up with.”
“We can’t stand here till they decide something thousands of years from now. What do we do with this? We can’t let the Kermac return and d
o their thing.”
The Takkian said, “Captain, we are by definition also Children of the Conck and this is according to our religion a holy place. The Conck agrees that we, too, can make decisions for the Conck, so we call Takkkk and let them declare this place Takkian and thus Union, and we’re off to play pirates. All this silicone stuff is fine and dandy for normal Takkians, but I didn’t sign up with the Navy to do all those boring things we Takkians do, with all due respect, ma’am.”
Chapter 20: Ship of Horrors
The other disguised Free Space operations unit turned out to be a Togar claw ship. A truly ancient tech level six warship that had the stylized form of a lion’s paw, at least that is how Shaka described it, and it was 600 meters long.
At first, we actually went to battle stations, but the Togar female captain identified herself on the same special communications equipment we had and was exclusive to NAVINT, as a secret operative like us. We met aboard her ship, officially named Quicha-Too, but it had a secret second Union designation: USS Chimera.
From the outside, it truly was a crude, primitive surplus cruiser that had several private owners before it became the Quicha-Too, the ship of a freelancing independent Togar.
Inside, it was as modern and well equipped as any modern Union ship. The Togar gave me a little tour and told me about her mission and challenges while our crews loaded crated Kermac tech, Kermac crew members in stasis, and an Olour rock, also in stasis, along with boxes of loot and specimens.
I learned that she had been doing this now for seven years and had made herself a solid reputation as a freelancing jack of all trades. She wasn’t really known to be a pirate, but her careful crafted personality was known to do any sort of shady deal.
Her main mission was to gather intelligence for NAVINT in Free Space.
She and her crew were delighted about Richter Base and having a regular port of call now. She had orders to tow the T Cruiser and bring what we had collected there for further analysis. She also looked forward to a few months R&R.
Eric Olafson: Space Pirate Page 40
