The man next to Shaun whispered, “That sounds overstated. With all the helicates and magnetic silicates on board they wouldn’t need to buy fuel. Besides, both inter- and intrahelical engines are ‘chamilophagitic’ – that is, they use very low amounts of fuel, and ninety-nine percent of that is collected from dark matter as you pass through it – and that doesn’t have to be paid for! I can’t see how they can be so very much out of pocket.”
“As you go around the ship,” the commander continued, “ask to see anything you want. I believe you are most interested in the engines and the cargo.”
“We are,” stated Prof Rob. “Five of us will inspect your engines and the repairs you are effecting. Have you any other areas of damage you want to show us?”
“We have nothing that remains to be seen that is damaged. My crew have worked very hard on everything.”
“Except the cleanliness!” muttered Shaun’s companion under his breath.
“So the rest of you, please inspect the cargo and anywhere that seems relevant,” ordered Prof Rob.
Tam and Shaun attached themselves to the group and were led off to the right. The five engine experts, including the man who had whispered to Shaun, descended some stairs with the commander.
The two friends hung back a bit and tagged onto the end of the line. They were followed by a crew member clearly instructed to bring up the rear and make sure nobody ‘got lost’.
Shaun asked him if there was a pictorial layout. He looked around and, seeing no other Sponrons, nodded. He seemed young; not much older than Tam. He led them to a panel on the wall and touched it. A schema of the ship was immediately displayed with a red dot indicating where they were.
“These panels are every tenth section,” explained the Sponron, “the ones with the green line above them. Using these you can never get lost. We also wear wrist bands that we can use, but they also tell the bridge where any of us are at any time. They are irremovable and remain on us at all times.”
“Clever,” enthused Tam. “So we are here. The cargo holds here and here and… here. The engines are located…”
“Down here,” said the Sponron as he touched a stairway sign on the plan and a second desk was displayed.
Tam played with the panel, exploring up and down and examining different parts of the ship.
“We must go,” insisted the young Sponron after a minute. “We must catch up with the others.” He propelled them towards the back of the snake of inspectors. When they had reconnected with the line, Tam asked the young Sponron about the crew quarters.
“I saw on the schema that there are extensive living quarters towards the bow. Is that where you all sleep?”
“Most of us. The senior officers and their females have suites aft. They don’t show up on the plan. They are restricted areas.”
“Females! I thought females were not permitted on your ship. We had to comprise our team completely of men. The women were forbidden!”
“Come. We will talk… off the record… please. Just wait,” whispered the Sponron.
The party came to the first of the holds and began grouping around a large window. The young Sponron spoke to one of his companions, indicating Tam and Shaun. Then they saw him do something quite unexpected. He slipped his wristband over his hand and passed it to his companion who put it into his pocket. He came quickly over to them and, looking up to see he wasn’t being watched, whispered:
“When we move on from here, follow me quietly.”
They made sure they showed interest in the piles of blue sacks stacked at one end of the hold. “Definitely helicate,” murmured one of the team. “They are not telling us that of course, but I can read the markings and am familiar with the bags.”
“You need helicate for the engines?” asked Tam.
“Yes. There is enough here to drive this ship for centuries. This is not for consumption. It is a consignment. We’re going to ask to see the manifest.”
They moved on but before they could get to the next hold, the young Sponron ushered them down a stairway.
“What I am going to tell you and show you didn’t come from me, right?”
“Right. OK,” said Tam and Shaun together.
“Good. My wristband is with my colleague. They will think I am with the party. You did not see me remove it, right?”
“Right. I didn’t think it came off?”
“It doesn’t. Or shouldn’t. I have been working on getting it lose enough to come off for months. Now, first, ignore whatever you have been told, we stole this ship, which the Thenits called the Talifinbolindit (which we shorten to ‘Tal’ – we don’t care for long names). The Thenits owned this ship but got into difficulties because there was a malfunction in one of the engines. It needed a replacement part but their three-dimensional printers both jammed and they did not have the parts and tools to repair them. They radioed for anyone in the vicinity to see if anyone could supply them with a 3D printer. We could. But they were not stranded. They still had one engine working. When our supreme commander on our own ship, the starship Zon, came within range he came aboard the Tal with weapons and we took it over. The Thenits were transferred onto the Zon and taken away and we were sent here to the Tal to replace them and secure the ship. The official tale is that the Thenit crew were conveyed to a planet without communication with the outside, the Planet Hegeh, but my friend saw what really happened because he was watching the shuttle with a telescope as it returned from the planet. They had been there about three days but they must have returned with most, if not all, of the Thenits. He said he didn’t realise what was happening at first. He saw tiny bubbles coming from the shuttle and bursting in space behind it. He looked through the telescope he had for star gazing – it’s the only good pastime we have, checking out all the beautiful stars – and he guessed they must have been the bodies of the Thenits exploding in the void, their atoms scattered into oblivion. Our officers did not tell us this, but we knew they were capable of it. There are three of them that run this ship. Please don’t judge our race by their behaviour. Us Sponrons are not like that for the most part.
“None of us elected to come on this voyage. We are all from an orphanage. They came to our school and offered us jobs at our spacedrome when we got to sixteen, but they did not tell us we would be used as crew on a starship. We were excited at first, but we soon learned the score. They torture us if they see any sign of rebellion. One girl was even jettisoned for saying what she thought. They use our sisters as sex slaves. Come, I want to take you to see them. As they are in the restricted section there are no monitors.”
“Thank you…er… what do we call you?”
“Call me… call me One. But I won’t tell you my real name in case…”
“Your secret is safe with us, One. We won’t quote you publicly. We shall just report what we have picked up ‘from listening as we went’,” stated Tam.
“Come, let us go quickly before we are missed.”
One took Tam and Shaun down another narrow flight of steep stairs and then to a door marked with small red letters. “The broom cupboard,” said One. “Keep this secret too.”
“Of course.”
“The main door to the restricted section is kept locked and is only accessible with a pass, which I don’t have. Our sisters are kept inside at all times but we have a secret entrance through this cupboard which leads into a wardrobe in my sister’s room.”
One opened the cupboard, removed a few items and knocked on the back wall three times, left a pause and knocked again. After a minute, there was a reply of two knocks which One followed up by another rhythmical knock. A low panel was then pulled open from the bottom three feet of the cupboard. One hissed, “I have guests from the planet,” and signalled for them to squeeze through. He then replaced the brooms and closed the door.
Inside Tam and Shaun found themselves in what they described as “feminine space”. After all the rest of the ship, this was immediately different. One introduced them, then said
quickly to the girls, “Tell them your story. We only have a short time.”
Shaun and Tam were led around the restricted quarters. They saw the luxury in which the three senior officers lived. The apartments were rich in art treasures – paintings, sculptures, and ceramics. The upholstery was ornate and sumptuous. The women were all young.
“The officers access their captive harem at will,” said one of them. “They come and select one of us for each of them, sometimes more. They are cruel and inflict pain. If we get pregnant we are beaten until our babies leave us.”
“One of our sisters,” said another, “stood up to them and escaped into the main deck where she denounced them and told our brothers all that was happening. They forced her into the airlock and ejected her into space. We were all made to look out and see her die. Her body died, but her spirit lives on in us – and she is with God. She is more than material atoms.”
“After that,” said One, “we cut a way through the cupboard. We know everything, but we pretend we know nothing.”
Tam said that he would report what he knew without the officers being able to guess how he knew until a rescue could be attempted. The girls wept.
“We will not dare believe we can be free until we see the outside of this ship and we are safe!” emphasised the first. The others nodded their agreement. “But we are grateful to you whatever happens. Now go. You must not be caught.”
One squeezed through the wardrobe wall and waited in the cupboard listening. When he felt the way was clear he gingerly opened the door. No-one. Quickly the two from Joh stepped back into the corridor. The door was closed. The girls were safe from being seen to have had visitors. One led them back up the stairs and through a tiny corridor that opened out near the tenth hold. One held up his hand and they held back in the shadows until they could hear the inspection party with their guides pass the end. As soon as they had gone by they emerged and joined back up with the others. One’s friend slipped his bracelet back to him and Tam and Shaun strained close to see into the hold being shown to the group.
“Interesting,” said one of the team, and then smiled a welcome to Tam and Shaun who returned a relieved smile back, “there must be enough insulation material there for several domes. Rocks with these properties are only found on a few planets – these look as if they have come from Telba.”
“Correct,” said the guide. “You have need of them on your planet?”
“No,” replied the scientist. “Fortunately our planet is one of the warm ones. We are very privileged.”
“Very,” agreed the Sponron.
No doubt, thought the scientist to himself, you would like to get your hands on our planet too. But you will find that it is well protected! Their inter-planetary alliance had been tested before and any attempt at attack was intercepted before the assailants could even land by disrupters beamed from ten other worlds.
The final hold on the Tal was the one kept at extremely low teperatures. It was shielded on all sides. The door-side had an automatic heat sensitive swivel drive that kept the opening pointing away from any heat source within the ship. Furthermore, anything above a few degrees Kelvin on the external skin of the craft above the hold would determine its positioning. Very near a star, while in planetary orbit, the orbit would be adjusted in such a way as to keep the planet between the craft and the star, and the whole ship would also rotate to ensure the hold constantly faced away from the planet into outer-space.
“Where was all this bound?” asked one of the team.
“I don’t know,” replied the guide. “You will have to ask the commander.”
“Whoever it was is missing this stuff. They could even be starving!”
“Ask the commander,” he insisted.
“Of course. I will.”
Meanwhile the five engineers had asked enough questions and seen enough evidence to conclude that both of the engines would have had to cease to work to merit a mayday call. They witnessed a group of Sponrons who had the covers off one of the engines and who were hovering around with spanners. The engines were, of course, both turned off at present. The Sponrons were indicating that they had only managed to repair one of the engines and were still working on the other. (In fact, they discovered later, the one engine that had ceased working had been repaired by the Thenit owners when they had arrived with the 3D printer before they had been forcibly removed.) But the five Joh engineers, although they were not personally familiar with a chamilophagitic intrahelical engine, knew when people were only playing with things. In fact, these Sponron engineers were probably not engineers at all!
One of the Joh team looked meaningfully at his colleague, “Go and ask them some questions,” he said. Their guide immediately intervened. “No-one is to disturb them. I have my orders.”
I bet you have, he thought. “Fine, so can we talk to you?”
“Of course.”
“What do you know about intrahelical engines?”
“Very little, I’m afraid.”
“But you can tell us how long you have been repairing this?”
“Ever since we arrived on the ship.”
“What about the other engine. You have repaired it? When?”
“Three months.”
“Three standard months. Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Come. I will lead you to the briefing deck. Our commander and his team have prepared you tea.”
“Very good. Have we all seen what we need to here?” The others nodded.
They all reassembled at the briefing room and were given some strange looking cake. It tasted even stranger but was pronounced safe by their protection man. The commander approached the engineers and asked if they had enjoyed their tour.
“Immensely. How long did you say you have been repairing the engines?” one of the engineers managed through a mouthful of Sponron cake.
“Four months. The second engine is not finished.”
“We could see that. We did not disturb your engineers.”
“Good.”
***
An hour later the team was back on Joh at the spacedrome. The shuttle had been dismissed and the pilots told they would be contacted as soon as they had spoken to their superiors. They were all careful not to give any indication of dissatisfaction with what they had seen, but they were all aware that their inspection team had not been given the access they required. What were the Sponrons really up to? And if they knew, what could they do about it?
27
As soon as they were reassembled in private with Director Ylah and their other female colleagues, Prof Rob called for a review. They began with the engineers and their view on the engines. They all agreed that the maintenance job was staged.
“They were playing at it. They were just ‘looking around with spanners’,” they explained.
The other party had taken a full inventory of what they could see in the eleven holds they had seen, but they were sure there was a twelfth. Tam raised his hand and said that he had seen an interactive schema of the ship which showed twelve holds.
“Thank you,” said Rob. “That seems to be conclusive then. What about the manifest?”
“Likewise incomplete. None of us are familiar with Thenitic but the translation and transliterations into interstellar terminology would indicate that two pages were missing. Some of the things in the holds are not accounted for on the manifest. There may be other items not listed that are in the twelfth hold.
“Could be weapons or ammunitions,” suggested one of the team. “The ship appears remarkably clear of them.”
“Noted,” said Rob. “Now our young men, Tam and Shaun here, managed to go walk about. Shaun, Tam tell us what you found.”
The young people related what had happened to them from beginning to end. The company was shocked, but not surprised, to learn of the fate of the Thenit crew. They explained about the danger that One had put himself in to take them to the restricted area and what t
hey found there. On learning about the young female Sponrons and the abuse they were suffering, the meeting let out an audible gasp.
“So both deceiving and hypocritical,” said the woman physicist. “But I am delighted to hear that our Sponron officers are not representative of their people. This is abuse wherever you are, but these abusers are doing it with a high hand. They have no excuse.”
“We… er… said,” stammered Tam, “we said we would try and rescue them.”
“Did you now?” smiled Prof Rob.
“We have no choice!” It was Kakko, almost shouting from the back of the room. “How could you sleep knowing you have left innocent people to continue to be abused by bullies? You have to stop them!” Her righteous indignation spilled out, added to the frustrations she had already suffered. “You’re not just going to leave them there! Are you?”
“Hold on young lady, don’t read things into this that have not been voiced.”
“But…”
“Miss Smith, no-one wants to leave them to suffer. Is that OK…? Now we need to keep calm and level headed here and decide exactly how to tackle this. At the moment we are still gathering facts and observations. We are very grateful to you two for your careful and circumspect work. It is often the case that young people can get into places that older people cannot. You have done an excellent job. Thank you… now, we must turn to our lawyers. What is the legal situation here?”
A lawyer rose to his feet and referred to his e-sheet.
“The claim of the Sponrons to have salvaged the ship has been borne out by the United Bureaux of Interplanetary Transport (UBIT). They reported answering a call for help. When contact had been made it appears that their ship which they call… er,” he checked his notes, “the Tal-i-fin-bol-in-dit, was stranded. The Sponrons offered to take them to safety which they did on Planet…” he referred again to his e-sheet, “Planet Hegeh. A radio link was established but after twenty-four hours, contact was lost. The Thenit commander appeared to be reading from a script but there were photo-shots of a makeshift camp being set up on the ground. He said they were trying to make contact with the local people, but to our knowledge Hegeh is not currently inhabited. The Thenit commander said that the Sponrons had put into operation some sort of salvage plan but he was not sure what that entailed.”
Ultimate Justice Page 27
