Krabbel was fastest, he took Elfi and, in blinding speed, a silvery liquid thread came out of his abdomen and he spun it around her arms and legs.
Wetmouth was over her a heartbeat later, using her ever-present scanner. "Mao, quick, get me the med kit. I need to sedate her; her electroencephalograph is off the scale."
While Mao hurried to get the kit, Har-Hi looked at me and said, "Do you feel anything?"
"No, nothing at all. I am going to check on the robots. Stay with me and if I act weird, sedate me too!"
To Cirruit, I said while I got up, "What is the status on the GalNet terminal?"
"It is a mess, and I don't have all the parts I need to make it work, but Shaka and I can manufacture the parts we don't have. I estimate about 48 hours till we can send a message and perhaps another day before we can receive."
"All right do what you can. Hans, take that Paralysator cannon and take it to the roof and assemble it."
Hans nodded and left.
I looked down to Wetmouth who had Elfi's head in her lap. "Wetty, you stay with Elfi and make sure she is all right." Before I went out myself, I added, "Krabbel and Mao, you go to bed and in four hours one of you relieve Hans."
"I am not tired," Mao said.
"We always need someone fresh on guard; Krabbel will take over after you."
"Aye!"
Har-Hi followed me outside. It was very dark except for the day-bright circle of the construction site. Clouds of local insects swirled around the lights.
I took the command board and cut the light. The robots didn't need it and I wanted to see what happened around us. Har-Hi handed me something.
"What is that?"
"Dark vision goggles. No Dai leaves his bunk without them. I always have a spare set, just in case."
I held them before my eyes and the surroundings were as bright as day, except for color. Everything appeared in gray tones.
"They're great, but I think I didn't turn them on right. I can't see any color."
"Because they are made for Dai eyes, we don't perceive color as you humans do."
"That explains it."
The robots had made enormous progress and cleared the ground from any vegetation almost completely around. The robots sunk to their knees in mud even at shore of the bog lake. I kept slowly turning and then I saw it! Just outside the 500m circle-shaped clearance at the jungle's edge. It looked like an upright snake, a being without legs but it had arms and a wicked, evil looking head with long horns. I instinctively knew this was not another animal but one of our adversaries! Once I had spotted it I saw there were more than one hiding over there. Well-camouflaged among the trees and bushes, but now that I knew what I was looking for I could spot them.
And as I saw them, the stinging headache returned, and for a very brief moment, I wondered why I was not killing the Dai pirate next to me. But it was clearly a foreign thought and I had no urge to act on it. Again, I felt the ring on my finger getting warm and all the foreign influence left me instantly. Har-Hi said, "Are you still you?"
"Yes I am. They just tried to get me to hurt you. I can see them," I pointed in the direction where I saw the snake beings.
Har-Hi's TKU roared and several pulses of superheated energy plasma hammered into the jungle, setting trees and bushes on fire.
I took a deep breath. "Did you get one of them?"
"They moved just as I aimed, so I am not sure, but the TKU blasts are powerful and it is likely I have injured one."
I looked back and said into my comm."Hans, come in."
"Hans here."
"Is that Paralysator cannon ready?"
"Just about! This is a big one even for me."
"How long?"
"One moment!" I saw him putting the heavy projector barrel on a tripod and then, after he secured the coupling, he said, "Ready!"
"Put it on maximum intensity and strafe the jungle, 360 degrees."
Paralysator rays were invisible. The rays were designed to interrupt neurological impulses and supposed to be effective on almost every life form ever encountered.
All the jungle noises that had been a constant background until now were gone. We could now hear the robots' stomping movements.
"Give it another pass just to make sure," I said.
Har-Hi said, "Anything smaller than a nufgwaug will be dead for at least a click! That's a F4 Paralysator, anything stronger is ship-mounted."
"Let's find out!" I pulled my blaster and jumped into the chest-deep water. My boots were sinking in mud and I slowly waded towards where I had seen the snake with arms. Har-Hi's TKU blasts had disintegrated several trees and left a smoldering smoking hole in the jungle's foliage of at least 20m in diameter.
Har-Hi was following me and cursed. "I hate clean water, but this is worse!"
"You hate water?"
"I am a terrible swimmer and every time we had to swim in basic training I was horrified. I don't like to admit it to anyone, but I am afraid of water."
"Same happens to me when I have to space walk. The time we went after that Dai sphere I almost lost it."
"You went anyway."
"And so are you right now, not to mention jumping in after me earlier today."
"I had no time to think about it when that thing dragged you under."
We reached the shore. The ground was gooey and wet and the dirt stuck to our boots, but it got better the further we got away from the shore of the mud pond. Everywhere there were dead or paralyzed animals and insects. The Paralysator rays set at this intensity completely fried the neuro pathways of most life forms for good and killed instantly.
We found a large piece of scaled tail at the edge of the blast area, the rest of it had to have been turned to ashes like everything else caught where the plasma bolts struck. "I think you got it. That is all that's left of it."
I saw something a little deeper in the jungle. It was another one of these snake-like beings. It was about man-sized and looked very alien. It appeared unharmed but was felled where it stood by the Paralysator ray.
Har-Hi pulled his PDD out of a belt container and set it to scanner function. "I still read life signs. It is not dead."
The being looked fierce and dangerous even now, being unconscious. Keeping my blaster drained on the snake's head I used my comm. unit, activated it and said, "Wetty, how is Elfi doing?"
"She is fine and she cannot detect any Psionic influence."
I heard Elfi. "I feel fine, except have you ever tried to get sticky spider silk out of your hair?"
"No, I never had that problem. Do we have something we can use to contain an alien and very likely hostile and dangerous life form?"
Wetmouth answered. "Yes, all you want; this is a research post after all. The lab is stocked with xeno bio specimen containers of every size and they are equipped with stasis fields."
"Please come out here where we are and have a robot bring one of those containers large enough for a being about three meters long and perhaps half a meter thick at the widest."
***
The rest of the night passed without further incident.
Wetmouth was in the lab with the snake-being and ran tests on it. Elfi claimed she could not detect any influence all night.
After a few hours' rest, and breakfast, I went outside and checked on the robots' progress, who had resumed their building task.
During the night they had built a circular wall of interlocking blocks. Inside that ring, most of the water was gone and the robots drove piles in the ground, most likely as a foundation for the planned building.
Other bots carried big square stones to the recycler. When I realized what they were carrying and made them stop. Inside the excavated circle were ruins of a previously submerged temple or building of some kind. It was clearly nothing natural but had to have been made by an intelligent species.
I called Wetmouth out. She looked at it and got excited. "This planet must have had or have an intelligent species!"
"Would those
snake beings not count as intelligent?"
She shook her head. "I am not sure what they are and the specimen you caught does have the higher brain functions of a sentient being but the DNA does not match other native life forms. Their DNA has clear signs of being constructed and not developed naturally."
"Well, whoever built that temple might have made those snakes," I suggested.
She climbed down to examine the exposed ruins and I followed.
She sighed. "It looks like the robots have already carried away most of it, at least what is inside the circle. There is not much left, but from the layout and what I can see it seems most of the ruins are outside the circle and still under water."
I pointed at an exposed stone block. "Is there some sort of writing on this one?"
She knelt in the muck and wiped the surface clean. "Yes it is. It is a simple hieroglyphic alphabet. I should be able to make sense out of it eventually." She stared at it for only about five minutes then she nodded. "Yes, I am able to read most of it. The natives built this temple to appease what they call Star Gods. Strangers who came from the heavens and, according to this there were two kinds of visitors, fought each other in the sky and on the ground without interacting with the natives at all. They completely ignored the natives but caused much death and destruction among them nevertheless. After a decade of fighting the Star Gods left as suddenly as they had appeared but left the coiling monsters behind! It says here, that the snakes caused brothers to fight to the death. Friends were suddenly turned into raving murderers. The writer of this message has little hope of survival and fears that his whole kind is doomed."
She looked up. "I think those snake beings caused this whole civilization to die."
"Who do you think those Star Gods were?" I asked her while I tried to picture the position of the world in relation to its position in the galaxy.
"We are close to Nul space. They are fighting the Shiss for millennia off and on. It could have been them. Also, we know very little about Nul space. Maybe there are other species that have lived in this region before the Nul expanded their influence to this area."
Wetmouth then asked me for the robot control unit so she could instruct them to help her with further excavation.
It was the morning of the third day when Cirruit came to me. "We are able to send and receive. The GalNet terminal is repaired and works fine, but I am getting no signal." He simulated a sigh, as was his habit when he was frustrated. "I don't understand it, even though Quagmire Bog is at the fringes, we are in Union space and should be able to pick up GalNet, but nothing. I am not even getting the baseline of the emergency call network and we should get that even when you are 5000 light years outside of Union space, which we are not."
"Are you sure it is working?"
"I am certain. The GalNet terminal is like new. Instead of repairing it, I had the nanites of the robot factory make me all the parts. With the nanites it was easy to make a second terminal and I can receive the signal from the first, but nothing from the outside!"
"What could cause this?"
"Only two things; the Nul-Nul overran this part of space and destroyed every relay station in reach, or we are being jammed." Having seen how determined the Nul were, not too long ago, I hoped the Fleet was gathering and pushing to retake this sector. "How can we determine if we are being jammed?"
"None of our enemies have the means to jam GalNet as far as I know. Fleet special operations have jammers that can jam GalNet but it has to be localized, no technology I know of could jam an entire star system. So I suggest we build a relay drone and make it move a few million ways away from the planet and load it with a pre-recorded message. If we can't receive the drone we are jammed, but someone outside should be able to pick it up."
I pointed to the construction site. "Well, we've got the robots and the nanite factory, let's build one."
Har-Hi just came climbing down from our roof lookout, after he had been relieved by Elfi, and he waited till Cirruit was out of earshot. Then he said, "You know it is very likely the Nul have attacked the Union, especially after what happened in the Alegri and the Nobane system. What are we doing if the Devi is destroyed and we are stuck here?"
"Then we going to build us a ship, and go Nul hunting. We have a nanite factory and with some time I am sure we could manufacture something basic that gets us to the next Fleet outpost. We are far from out of options, but do you really think that there are enough Nul out there to really destroy the Devi? As long as that ship is commanded by Harris, and Stahl is around, they'll find a way!"
He smiled. "You're right, there might be a war going on out there, but the Union will prevail and Stahl won't let anyone destroy his ship."
He was about to go inside then he turned. "I think you are serious, you really would go Nul hunting!"
"You know me."
"You would have made a very good Dai. If the worst turns out to be true, I hunt Nul with you till the end of our days."
INTERLUDE: LARTHOP
Larthop, of course, had heard of Cherubim. But like everyone else he thought of her as a myth. He never thought she actually existed. There were a few whispered rumors about a shadowy, ghost-like woman acting on behalf of the Exo-terrestrial Intelligence Agency, but none of them sounded true or even possible. Long before the formation of the Union, when Terra and its colonies had its own fleet, it also had its own intelligence gathering service. Back then Earth had just stepped onto the galactic stage and had only reached tech level three with the help of the Saran. Earth was weak and vulnerable, with a comparably tiny and weak fleet, but the TIA was legendary for its ruthless efficiency. Most of the other civilizations were unprepared for the unbridled brutality the TIA operated.
During those early years it became known that the Terran Intelligence Service was operating outside any moral or ethical boundary. Like all key positions, the leader of this service was supposedly one of the mysterious 200 Immortals. No one really believed that this was a true story of course. There was no enigmatic guardian watching over the humans of Earth for millions of years, with the powers to make 200 individuals into Immortals, each of them with extraordinary talents and powers. All this was just skillful propaganda, Larthop had always been sure of that. He, like so many others, did not believe Richard Stahl or Admiral McElligott were Immortals or individuals who had been around for over 3,000 years, but rather genetically or cybernetically-crafted puppets acting as figureheads for the real unseen leaders in the back.
As the Union was founded, Earth became known as Terra and the TIA was disbanded, just like the Terran Fleet became part of the Union Fleet. All intel was now jointly handled by NAVINT and GALEYE, the official and only legal intelligence agencies of the Union.
All this had been through Larthop's mind many times now, ever since he had met that woman in the Pree Cave, deep underneath the surface of the old Kermac home world.
He, the leader and first priest of the Church of Darkness, had been on an odyssey-like journey for a very long time now. It was like an enormous puzzle and he had to cover much ground to get the pieces. It had all started so long ago when it became apparent that he was an exceptionally strong Psionic and had been accepted as the very first, and most likely last, student on Narth Prime. He was the very first non-Narth ever to set foot on that world. It was there he saw it, more felt it, an artefact the Narth were guarding. It was so full of pure power and promised godlike omnipotence. He learned from the Narth Supreme that the artefact was one of 12 such pieces. Once combined, a previously defeated entity of unimaginable evil would once more awake and seek revenge on those who led to its defeat. His life changed forever and he was filled with an unquenchable thirst and desire to gain that power for himself.
The Narth did not accept him for very long and asked him to leave. He denounced his Saresii roots after the High Council declared they did not want him to return unless he would conform to their ways and abandon his quest.
He was Saresii and could hope to look forward
to a very long life. He had spent the first 100 years exclusively dedicated to the study of anything and everything he could find about the Dark God and the Dark Ones. He studied any avenue. He tried to find answers in magic, the arcane arts, he walked the way of the Uta, the forbidden way of those who use their Psionic powers to open gateways to the Underworld and tap into realms and powers better left alone.
He made a pact with a shadowy group from another plane of existence. He knew them only as the Brotherhood and he could only contact them at certain times and only at one hidden gateway underneath the UNI Statue on the planet Netlor. He would act for them as an agent in this universe and he would in return get knowledge and power from the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood was obsessed with the Narth, without telling him why.
Following their information, he made his way to Koken, the recently discovered planet of origin of the Kermac.
Why the Kermac had abandoned their home world and traveled over 20,000 light years to relocate their culture, he did not know, but he did find what the UNI had left behind and he did find the Disc that the Brotherhood wanted him to find.
The Disc turned out to be a galactic map showing him the position of a place called the Cave of Things. The map pointed to a planet 90 000 light years away.
It was on Koken and in that hidden UNI chamber that a human female wearing black leather had suddenly revealed herself to him.
How she had managed to stay completely hidden from his Psionic powers was somewhat disturbing, although he knew of Terrans using active camouflage and cloaking technology to make their soldiers completely invisible, so the fact that she appeared out of thin air was neither very impressive nor unexplainable to him.
She introduced herself as Cherubim and offered him a way to reach that planet, 90 000 light years away.
He was wary of partnerships. He had partnered with the Kermac and a Thauran Union Admiral and the whole affair had turned out to be nothing but a waste of time.
But she knew dangerously much about him and she offered a way to his next destination.
He followed her to a small spaceship parked not far from the cave entrance, also perfectly camouflaged until she deactivated its cloaking shields.
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 40
