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 Jelly, 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 Leagu
e.
“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 do 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 9: 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.
I also was informed that a fleet of Takkian civilian ships was already on its way and the news that their ancient chant slates were actually correct and that there was a Conck had traveled fast and caused a religious revival on Takkian and Takian worlds. The plan was that the Takkian would settle the moon and Little Hell and then ‘officially discover’ the Conck and claim the system.
Of course, I had also informed the admiral about everything in great detail. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, according to the admiral, but the best available.
After the Chimera was loaded and we had received some additional supplies, we bid them farewell and Krabbel put in a course that would take us Port Brhama.
I had the crew assemble in our pirate’s den and said to them, “Now after a little unplanned detour, we are back on track with our original mission. We are once again pirates to the world. Any ship that crosses our bow is likely prey, and we are going to hunt other pirates and criminals.”
I held up a print-out and said, “This is a summary of the CID report about the attack on the Danny Huston, the civilian passenger liner that was attacked by pirates while we were at the Golden Bazaar and I want to read it to you.”
I cleared my throat and began to read out loud, “On February 5th, 5021 the Passenger Clipper Danny Houston on its way from Seven-Skies to Fairfield Planet was attacked and heavily damaged. The shipmaster of the Danny signaled full cooperation with the attackers and asked for mercy for his passengers. He assured the attacker that they were a completely unarmed civilian vessel.
“The Danny was boarded by pirates, and seventy passengers were taken captive. Every crew member was killed; the shipmaster was spaced without a suit.
“Four female passengers were brutally raped and afterward killed. The remaining forty-eight passengers, including children and the old not worth much on the slave market, were also spaced without suits.
“Aboard the Danny Huston were Saresii, Humans, Klack, Purple-throat Shiss and two Shail. Only one passenger, a Stellaris, managed to survive in space clinging to the outside of the stripped wreck.
“The pirate was identified as Captain Swift of the ship Swift Profit.
“It was the captain who did the raping himself, as you see can now behind me on the field screen. This footage was taken directly from the interior visual sensors of the Danny Huston. I realize the images are hard to stomach and quite graphic, but I wanted you to see them and get the same angry feeling I got watching these, the same feeling I got fighting that scum at Outpost 96. I want you to see why we do what we do.
“Some of us didn’t have a proper vacation or might resent the fact that we can’t go to port at regular intervals, but those passengers won’t come home at all.”
I was in my ready room. Moments ago, I had finished my daily logbook entry and now had taken my boots off and had my feet up on the desk. Leaning back, I was looking outside my viewport into the darkness of space.
It was late and the first night watch was about to leave the bridge to be relieved by the officers and crew members of the middle watch. I could hear the fourth bell that signaled the last thirty minutes of first night watch that went from 0000 hours to 0400 hours. I glanced at the roster readout I always kept open on one of my screens. It would be the first watch with Sobody being the Officer of the Deck and having the conn. Although he was not an Academy graduate or had all that much Union Fleet experience, he was conscripted, and Admiral McElligott himself wanted him to be an ensign. He was not inexperienced when it came to making command decisions. He had led an entire civilization for twelve thousand years and traveled aboard starships for at least that long. Besides, he’d turned out to be an asset and reliable, and I’d made the decision to put him on the rotation roster for bridge
watches. We were still eighteen days away from our next destination, Brhama Port. Space was vast and to meet another ship outside planetary systems was very rare, even on very busy traffic routes. Our sensors had not detected anything for the last two days. We could not use the full range of our active sensors because active sensors could be detected, and no Kartanian would have the sensor range of a modern Union ship.
I said, “Ship, give me a bridge visual.” Normally I would not spy on my officers and crew, but I wanted to see how Sobody came on and how he handled himself.
A new field screen established itself before me and Ship said, “I am curious, too, as to how he will do.”
To my ship AI, I said, “I still find it amazing to hear a computronic use words like curious and have the intuition to know why I wanted to watch. I wonder if we should not have more sentient computronics.”
Ship responded, “As much as I am thankful to you, don’t think it would be a very good idea. If personalities can choose to be good, then they also have the choice to do bad, and what damage could a ship’s AI do if it was malicious.”
I agreed and said, “Thinking it over, it wouldn’t be fair to the AIs anyway, as they had no choice but to become Ship AIs and serve. Not much of a choice.”
While I watched the first watch go through the final motions of their shift, Ship said, “I would have made that decision even if I had other choices. I am very content to be your AI.”
“I still think we need to find a way to treat you more fairly. You are on duty all the time, no free time, no leisure time and all that.”
“I am not human, Captain. I am sentient but not a biological being. I perceive things differently. I am made to function around the clock. I don’t require sleep, and I can think and act on many levels simultaneously. I can dedicate a section of mine to spend time on my hobbies when there is not much going on.” Ship paused and then said, “I speak and understand all languages of the Union and many more, and yet I can’t find the appropriate words to express how you make me feel when you say something like that.”
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 92
