‘Indeed, Clayton, but everything about this situation is theoretical.’
Clayton thoughtfully rubbed his unshaven face.
‘Sir,’ Leesha-Ha said gently, ‘you need sleep.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Use a sleep enhancer.’
‘I don’t want to.’
Leesha-H smiled reassuringly. ‘I’ve dialled you a rest programme. A cradle will arrive and take you to the Observation Tower.’
‘But …’
‘There are no buts, sir. Lack of sleep and worry will not solve the problem. You are going. And that’s an order.’
***
They were naked, hairless, white skinned, humanoid, and about one and a half meters tall. Although equipped with nose, mouth, and two eyes, they were expressionless. Their only distinguishing feature was a pink glow from the eyes.
They seemed pitiful – forlorn, innocent, and helpless. Flower-of-Sands reckoned there were about twenty of them, standing in neat rows.
‘What are they?’ Faithe whispered.
‘I’m not sure.’ Edge moved towards them. The creatures backed off.
‘Don’t frighten them.’ Flower-of-Sands said. ‘Give them time to realize we are not hostile.’
The creatures remained silent and did not move.
‘Who are you?’ Flower-of-Sands asked in standard galactic.
Nothing.
‘Can they speak?’ Edge asked.
A voice sounded in the minds. ‘We are cargo.’
‘They are telepathic.’ Faithe whispered. ‘They translate our thoughts.’
One of the creatures stepped forward, moving towards Flower-of-Sands, and changed into Ninthe – a perfect replica.
Flower-of-Sands gasped as more of the creatures turned into Ninthe. ‘Seriously?’
‘I get it,’ Edge chanted, revelation powering his voice. ‘I never thought I would see the day. I didn’t even know if they existed …’
‘What? Tell us.’ Flower-of-Sands was confused and embarrassed.
‘They are blanks.’
Flower-of-Sands and Faithe looked towards him, waiting for a clarification.
‘They are chameleons. I’ve heard rumours about them. Developed and still used on some worlds not of the Confederacy, worlds that do not have holoigloos, or virtual reality technology. They are illegal on most worlds. They are bio-engineered to be your heart’s desire, anything that you want – size, shape, or nature. The Confederacy of Liberated Worlds banned them thousands of years ago, but some fringe worlds still use them. This must have been an illegal trade, trafficked by affiliates of those pirates, that got into some form of trouble and crashed landed here.’
‘So where are the pirates?’ Faithe asked.
‘That is a good question.’
By now, all the blanks had changed into Ninthe, including more who had arrived through doors on either side of the cargo hold.
‘Do you think you could change back to blank, this is terribly embarrassing,’ Flower-of-Sands asked, at the same time willing it forcefully.
‘You do not like? We are sorry. We will try again.’
‘No, don’t be sorry. And do not try again, please.’
‘We only wish to please. State your desire.’
‘I have no desire. Please revert back to default.’
‘We are not here for pleasure,’ Edge transmitted. ‘We are here to help.’
‘Oh, thank you. We are grateful. We are in extreme circumstances.’
Flower-of-Sands felt relieved as the creatures slowly reverted to their original appearance.
‘Which of you is leader?’ Edge asked.
No response.
‘Is no one in charge of you?’
The response was unanimous. ‘We are cargo.’
‘Would one of you step forward and assume the position of leader?’ Edge pointed to one of the creatures who immediately took the form of Astral-La. Edge tried to laugh away his embarrassment. ‘No, no, not that. Stay blank. We are not clients. We are here to care for you. Do you have feeding facilities?’
The creature slipped back to default. It spoke with a tiny voice. ‘I will be spokesperson for my people. Yes, we have plentiful food.’
‘Where are the people in charge of you?’ Flower-of-sands asked.
‘Masters left ship as it crashed. They used escape pods. We have been awaiting their return. We have not over used the feeding bay. We have kept exactly to restricted diet regime bequeathed by our masters. Please do not punish us.’
‘Oh, poor things,’ Faithe said. She moved forward and the creatures backed off. ‘Do not be afraid. We are not here to hurt you or punish you in any way. We are here to rescue you.’
The blanks hesitated and then came forward again. One smaller blank rushed forward and embraced Faithe. Then others came forward, embraced, and kissed the feet of Edge and Flower-of-Sands.
‘We need food,’ Flower-of-Sands said when she eventually freed herself from the prolonged embraces of the creatures.
The one who was leader grabbed her hand and pulled. ‘Come, we have food.’
The creatures led the Oblique crew through a silver maze of corridors. Eventually they arrived at a canteen area dominated by a large food-arch. Flower-of-Sands, Faithe, and Edge were openly salivating, as they had not eaten proper food for a long time.
Soon, they were seated scoffing favourite dishes, watched by a mountain of blanks that had grown in number.
‘Is this all of you?’ Edge asked.
‘It is now, yes,’ the chief blank replied. There were now at least fifty of them.
‘Why don’t you eat?’ Faithe said. ‘Anything you wish – no rations, just whatever you like.’
The creatures remained impassive, but the crew could sense their excitement.
‘Do you mean you will not punish us?’ the chief blank whispered.
‘Of course not. We don’t punish. It is not in our nature.’
The chief blank went down on its knees and embraced Faithe’s feet. Faithe began to cry. ‘Oh dear, poor things. You have been so mistreated.’
‘Eat, all of you,’ Edge said with his mouth full. ‘Oh, crew, I’ve been in touch with Ninthe. She is on her way over.’
‘She is here now, the one we changed into, the one much loved by one here,’ the chief blank said, rekindling Flower-of-Sands’ embarrassment. ‘Some of us will welcome her and bring her here to you. You must rest.’ A group of creatures moved away swiftly.
A few minutes later Ninthe was sitting with the crew, close to Flower-of-Sands, looking refreshed and invigorated, her hair and eyes alive with curiosity.
‘I need to inspect this ship. Okay, it has crashed, obviously. Hull breaches have self-sealed. And there is fuel, energy, and life support. Most of the tech is functional. It must have been involved in some form of mishap. Folks, we are getting off this rock.’
‘Do you know about these creatures?’ Edge asked, still eating, and speaking with his mouth full.
‘They are bio-engineered slaves and are illegal everywhere, except on remote worlds with criminal factions.’
‘Not so remote, if you ask me. These criminal factions are right here in this system,’ Flower of Sands said.
‘True, they seem to have made the trip across from the Home Galaxy and are now operating in the Throne.’
‘I don’t like the idea of such people near the Marleeseen,’ Flower-of-Sands said.
‘I don’t either,’ Edge said. ‘When we get out of here, we must warn the Marleeseen before it is too late.’
‘It might already be too late,’ Ninthe said.
‘The thought of the Marleeseen in the clutches of those space pirates makes my blood go cold,’ Faithe said.
‘Mine too,’ Ninthe said. ‘At least, my equivalent of blood.’ She smiled at Flower-of-Sands and turned to the chief blank. ‘What caused the ship to crash?’
There was a long silence. Ninthe repeated her question. Still there was silence.
�
�Don’t be afraid. You can tell us,’ Faithe said. ‘We are not here to harm you. We are your friends.’
‘What caused the ship to crash?’ Ninthe asked in a gentler voice.
‘We did,’ the chief blank said finally.
Everybody was astonished. ‘Can you explain?’ Edge said eventually.
‘The crew of the ship was renegade-military. You would call them bandits, or pirates. They were to deliver us to a criminal outpost. They treated us badly – punishing and raping us repeatedly. They also put us on restricted rations. They used us in violent fantasies, and some of us died; we can be hurt just like you can, more so, as we cannot defend ourselves. They said we were a special product for people with depraved tastes. We realized that few of us would survive. We therefore created a telepathic terror fantasy. They believed that monsters had invaded the ship; they saw each other as the monsters, and they destroyed each other. We created one illusion after another. It was a terrible thing to do, but we were so scared. It was our only option. Please do not punish us.’
‘We are not going to punish you,’ Ninthe said. ‘We are simply here to help you and get us all off this moon.’
Edge stood, wiping his mouth, his eyes alert. ‘Can you take us to the bridge?’ He addressed the chief blank.
‘We were never allowed in there, but we know where it is. Follow. It is a bit of a walk.’
The Oblique crew followed the chief blank down a maze of corridors which lit up as they walked along them. The ship seemed to be functional, despite the crash, and the crew were optimistic that somehow, they could get the engines working.
The bridge lit up as they entered. A large circular panel, holo-screens, wall screens and weapons bays flashed with holographic control panels and symbols.
Ninthe wasted little time in conducting a detailed examination of the ship’s systems. Thin wires and tubing slid like serpents out of her umbilical area and inserted themselves into various parts of the panel. Flower-of-Sands found it difficult to imagine that she had slept with such a creature and fully expected comments from Edge; it did not happen, probably because the blanks had exposed his secret longing for Astral-La about which he was embarrassed.
Ninthe gave an informal report as her fingers and extensions worked furiously. ‘Propulsion looks normal. The drives are mostly intact. The crash obviously did some damage, but as far as I can ascertain, it was superficial. I have already initiated repair bots. The difficulty will be getting enough thrust to get lift off.’
‘But half the ship is submerged,’ Edge said.
‘Of course, yes, but my plan is to generate enough thrust for lift off. We may have to detach from at least half the ship. If that is the case, we must make sure all areas are properly sealed. I will run an initial diagnostic, after which there will be many more.’
‘How long will that take?’ Flower-of-Sands asked.
‘I’m not sure, Flower, I need to be thorough. I suggest you all take a shower, by the way. All three of you stink. Get some fresh clothes. I’m sure the blanks will oblige.’
The Galactic Confederacy equivalent of an hour later, Edge, Faithe, and Flower-of-Sands sat in the canteen area tucking into yet another meal, and chatting happily. Clean and fresh from a prolonged shower, they were feeling alive and hopeful for the first time since the pirate invasion. Only now, did they realize how near to malnutrition or even starvation they had been. This ship was a wonder, a gift from nowhere.
‘Why had you not planned to escape?’ Edge asked the group of blanks that had crowded around them like spectators.
‘We do not understand technology. Our brains work in a different way to yours. We are good at … people, at empathy. We don’t know how to make space ships fly. We can’t fight and do things like that.’
‘So,’ Edge said, ‘you believe the crew of this ship destroyed itself. Are you sure of that?’
‘Almost completely, yes. But there is always the chance the people to whom we were being sold will come looking for us. We are expensive cargo.’
‘And this is a pirate ship?’
Ninthe walked in. ‘To answer your question, yes. It probably began life as some sort of commercial vehicle, which was hijacked and converted by the pirate regime. It would have been a largescale operation, involving kidnapped technicians. As for the blanks, they fetch enormous prices on corrupt planetoids and developing, non-Confederacy worlds. The owners and/or buyers are bound to be looking. We need to be ready.’
‘And the Marleeseen?’ Flower-of-Sands said. ‘We need to get out of here and warn them.’
‘How would the Marleeseen react to the pirates? They would be helpless, would they not?’ Faithe asked.
‘Not completely,’ Edge said. ‘Anyway, the pirates might stay clear of them.’
‘That is wishful thinking, Edge,’ Ninthe said. ‘The Marleeseen planet is a paradise, a classic life sustaining planet – third from its primary, with gas giants further out, and asteroid belts. There are not so many systems like that in the known universe – Liberty Primary is one, the Angel Peril system another, then there is New Salvation and the Marleeseen system. In the developing universe, we have Muron, Troy 3, and Earth. That is not a lot in this vast universe. The pirates will want it. That may be why they are here, rather than hiding in some obscure brown dwarf system.’
‘How near are we to launch?’ Edge asked.
‘My initial diagnostic confirms that we have the fuel and propulsion for lift off. I have initiated multiply drones and robotics for repairs. In a few hours, I will know more. But I would estimate the equivalent of two Liberty days.’
‘So, we can just sit back and party?’ Edge took a swig from a bottle of inebriating beverage that one of the blanks had produced out of nowhere.
‘Not quite.’ Ninthe, who was looking radiant, laughed. ‘But you all need rest.’
‘We can oblige, if you need company.’ A group blanks approached, pulsating, poised for metamorphosis into some fantasy figure.
‘No, not now,’ Edge said, trying to hide his embarrassment, not the least because he was tempted. ‘We need to rest. We have a lot before us.’
‘Have we offended you?’ one of the blanks spoke gently to Edge, remaining blank but speaking with Astral-La’s voice.
‘No, of course not. We just need rest.’
‘In that case,’ another blank cooed. ‘We are excellent masseuse. We can massage your worries away.’
‘Now that,’ Flower-of-Sands said, ‘I can live with.’
One of the blanks took her hand and began leading her away. Others followed.
‘Who would have believed it?’ Edge said as he watched the figures of Flower-of-Sands and Faithe disappear into sleeping cubicles, accompanied by blanks eager to accommodate.
As he undressed, he could hear Faithe and Flower-of-sands sighing with pleasure. He slid into bed and into the gentle arms of Astral-La – her breath, her voice, her scent, everything about her. He tried to resist, but Astral-La’s overwhelming presence ensured total failure.
No wonder these creatures fetch such soaring prices, he thought, as he melted into bliss.
Chapter 16
The pirate warship Aggravator had a single target: an unnamed planetoid somewhere in the system’s outer asteroid belt. But where exactly? This question poised on the mind of Captain Shields, leader of a pseudo-Rann criminal faction currently residing on the fourth planet of the Marleeseen system. The captain told his XO to take command and ambled off to the interrogation room.
He needed to know the precise location of the planetoid that was the crash site of the star ship Wily Boy and its lucrative cargo. Why was the prisoner holding out? What was he afraid of? What could be worse than the beating he was suffering? The outer asteroid belt was immense; it would take hundreds of years of searching, and he certainly did not have a hundred years; a hundred hours would be pushing things. His clients had committed a vast sum for the cargo, and now it was lost on some non-listed outer belt planetoid. He grabbed a stimu
lant drink from a vending machine positioned in the corridor outside the interrogation room and went in.
First, he went into a small anti-chamber where he could view the progress of the interrogation in holo. It was not going well. The prisoner, whom his men had beaten into an unrecognizable pulp, was nearing a condition of sustained unconsciousness. Shields thought of stories of an ancient race called Hade who employed interrogators known as Brides of Persuasion, whose extreme sophistication and knowledge of human anatomy and central nervous system made them figures of dread throughout the cosmos. Unlike the crude methods of the men under his command, these creatures knew how to extract information. They would have gleaned it from this idiot within minutes.
He went into the interrogation chamber and looked scathingly at his men’s handiwork. ‘What a mess. Take him away, clean him up, and give him food, drink, and pain killers. You imbeciles, you low-grade bioengineered rejects, I want him alive, not dead. He can’t tell us anything if he is dead.’
Two hours later the prisoner sat opposite Shields in a small annex to the interrogation room. Officers and technical staff were also present, lining the walls and creating an oppressive atmosphere. The prisoner had eaten and a glass of water sat before him. His face was bruised so badly that Shields had difficulty making eye contact.
‘What happened?’ Shields said soothingly. ‘Where is the cargo? Where is this planetoid?’
The prisoner, Captain Alsop, spoke with difficulty. ‘We were attacked. Monsters. Terrible monsters.’
Shields sighed. ‘How did they board the ship? Did someone let them in?’
‘I don’t know, I swear. They came out of nowhere. We were outnumbered and outgunned. It happened so quickly. Their practices were horrific. They did such terrible things to the crew. And the crew panicked. I was the only one who successfully escaped.’
‘Leaving the cargo in deep hibernation. Leaving an expensive cargo ship to rot on an obscure planetoid, or was it a moon, or a moonlet?’
‘I don’t know. I am … sorry.’
‘And highly – no, I correct myself – astronomically expensive cargo, dumped.’
Flower-of-Sands: The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut (Seriously Intergalactic Book 1) Page 16
