Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7

by Vanessa Ravencroft

  He pointed to Circuit and said, “Ma’am, the chief engineer and his team have modified one of our Armadillos to make it look old and non-Union. I studied as much about Sin 4 as I could find, since it was a possibility that we would come here. Visiting Trash Island would be a highlight in my scientific career, ma’am.”

  I sipped at my coffee, giving Gwen a thankful smile and asked, “Why is this island of such interest to you?”

  “Unrestricted transfer of goods and lifeforms for almost 1,500 years from all regions of our Galaxy must have created a very unique environment, especially in terms of vermin.”

  Shea agreed. “It sure would be an interesting expedition and no one but Skaakh and Stiks live on Trash Island.”

  I finished my coffee and said, “All right, I approve it, but I better go along to make sure our science crew isn’t overdoing things.”

  Chapter 11: Trash Island

  Circuit had done a terrific job, gluing and welding armor plates over the sleek form of a Landing Tank. Rusty steel chain curtains covered the wide Ultronit Tracks and the whole thing looked like an old, many times repaired, all-terrain crawler with an ArtiGrav. The main cannon was still there but looked like an old artillery piece and not like the high-energy QGP it was.

  The mission pod module on this tank had been changed from combat to surface survey and science. Instead of more weapons, advanced shields, and a troop compartment, this module was equipped with external manipulators, mini lab equipment, and a science sensor suit.

  Shea had left to go to the temple, being torn between going there and coming with us. Hans and the Golden had left as well.

  Circuit stood next to the modified tank and said, “Do you mind if I pull a Level Two on our Energy Tap system?”

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  His face was unchanged as ever, and I could not say or pinpoint how I was able to sense his moods and emotions, but to me he sounded somewhat concerned.

  “As you know, it is experimental technology, and we are the first ship really using it, other than test platforms. The maintenance manuals and documentation is very rudimentary. It was Three-Four who first saw a minute energy leak. Basically, it is a small hole bleeding a previous unknown form of transdim energy past the chandeliers, but it is inside the system and very small.”

  “What are you trying to tell me? Is the ship in danger? Are we able to leave if we have to?”

  “The ship is not in danger, and we always have the conventional backup. I am also certain I can fix it, but I need about six hours. Neither the shields nor the Janus system will be affected.”

  “You’re my chief engineer, and I trust your judgment, just keep me informed.”

  Circuit promised and left.

  I contemplated staying but then decided to trust my crew. A few moments later, we left the Tigershark and flew due south. It was true; no one cared about us. After a few minutes, we were simply another armed skimmer in the skies. Krabbel sat at the controls and Dien Tallow sat next to him in the mission command seat. Narth went along out of scientific curiosity, TheOther manned the turret, and there were four other crew members in the crawler as well, all from the science department, and I was simply a passenger, more or less.

  Tallow directed us south, away from the city and air traffic became less, consisting almost entirely of dirty open-freight skimmers loaded to the brim with waste. Most of them were just wooden contraptions with fitted ArtiGrav lifters and simple propellers for locomotion.

  One of the scientists sat next to me. She was maybe a dress size two and if it wasn’t for her older-looking face, she could easily be taken for a teenager. She brushed a lock of her chestnut-brown hair out of her face. She had long thin fingers and a doll-like appearance.

  She was excited and said to me, “Thank you, captain, for making this opportunity available to us. You see, every type of vermin you could think of has been brought here to SIN 4, either by accident or on purpose. There are no hygiene or import rules. And for over 500 years, they have been dumping trash and waste on this island, along with life forms from all across the Galaxy. I can’t wait to see how Terran rats have adapted to this environment.”

  I shivered, involuntarily remembering the white tentacle thing in the sewers, and said, “To each its own. I guess everyone needs a hobby.”

  She smiled. “Captain, I am a Xenobiologist and, to me, such things are quite fascinating. About 60 years ago, there was a Galactic Geographic Expedition to Sin 4 and they focused on Trash Island and found some of the strangest life forms there. It was never done again, because two expedition members got killed, most of the gear stolen, and two were abducted for ransom. So, I look forward to see what has changed and what is still there.”

  “I am always amazed by what scientists find fascinating.”

  “You have seen the landing field? It is cracked and large patches are corroded and have disintegrated into dust.”

  I nodded. “I have.”

  “It was leveled and installed by Karthanian civil engineers about 1,500 years ago in the hopes to get this planet chosen as the meeting place for the Big Four. The material used is very similar to our Duro-Crete and should have lasted thousands of years. But someone imported a mineral-eating microbe and it mated with another, perhaps local, micro-organism and a new life form emerged that finds the polymer compounds used in that Karthanian concrete especially delicious. The result is crumbling and cracking concrete.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Now that is actually interesting. If that microbe could be altered and delivered by bombs, it could turn an entire spaceport to dust.”

  Krabbel laughed. “Our captain really is Terran, no sense denying it! The first thing they always think of is how something could be used as a weapon!”

  I shrugged. “It was a logical conclusion, was it not?”

  Narth raised his head. “Indeed, especially logical to Terrans.”

  The chestnut-haired Xenobiologist said, “Also, we can devise materials immune to these effects. These microbes are just one example. There is a common weed on Terra called dandelion. It, too, found its way to Sin 4 and it has developed a symbiosis with a flesh-eating plant. Now the little seed pods that look so lovely on Earth carry tiny flesh-eating pods that instantly burrow into unprotected skin and cause serious infections.”

  Dien Tallow turned in his seat to add his expertise. “The standard hygiene procedures developed for all Union ships are based on such research. Did you know that the Tigershark and all Union ships, for example, have special anti-contamination systems fitted to our landing gear wells? Every time landing gear is retracted, it is sterilized. Thanks to our decontamination field at the air locks, we hardly notice. The harmful aerosol scan procedures are strictly observed by your environmental engineers. Our bio-form transfer laws were all developed using research like that.”

  I raised my hand. “You made a point. Maybe I was not entirely fair in my assessment, and I know we are supposed to hunt pirates, that is our primary goal, but the pursuit of knowledge is also important, and this is why even a ship like the Tigershark has extensive lab facilities. I am not against scientific exploration, and I would love to simply go on an exploring mission without masking as pirates. That is why I agreed to this, and I am sure it is time well spent. We just need to be careful. Pirates don’t explore much, and we can’t risk our cover.”

  TheOther did not take his eyes of his targeting and scanning oculars but he said, “I feel very blessed to be here and on a mission that adds to the body of knowledge. Y’All do not explore, at least not as far as I know. This thirst for knowledge is what makes the Union and you Humans truly superior to us.”

  Krabbel said, “I hate to interrupt this conversation, but we are here! Trash Island is below us.”

  I asked, “TheOther, are we followed?”

  “No, ma’am. All I have noticed are garbage scow floaters and none of the ones within range has any scanning hardware.”

  I looked out the viewport on my
side. If there was a hell in the Universe, I was sure we had found it. The water around Trash Island was a dark-brown soup with floating spots of shimmering oil and solid waste. How the island once might have looked I could not say. All I saw were mountains and more mountains of trash, waste, and rotting garbage. Smoldering heaps belched black smoke into the air that even made the sky over this island look dirty and somewhat greenish. Krabbel landed in a valley between two mountains and engaged the tracks. In the distance, we saw one floater dumping trash. I could clearly see the form of two Human bodies falling down as well. The two-man crew of the floater had bare bodies and used simple shovels to clear the cargo bed. They paid no attention to us at all.

  Narth pointed out the viewport. “Please stop. I believe I see an Itomarian Vision Staff.”

  Krabbel stopped, and Dien became excited. “I believe you are correct. It indeed looks that way. What an eye!”

  Before I could ask, Narth’s voice answered as usual in my mind. “A long-gone species of space travelers, believed to be associated with the UNI. They had a large empire long before the Celtest. I believe they belonged to the First League, the one the Conck mentioned. We had little contact with them, as we Narth isolated ourselves as much as possible from other species. However, their technology was highly developed and very unique.”

  We cycled through the small air lock, wearing our new Atlas battlesuits, altered in such a way that they did not look like Union technology. Even Narth choose to put a battlesuit on. Krabbel remained and kept an eye on the scanners.

  I sank to my knees into the mass of moist waste before the suit adjusted and lowered the gravimetric ground pressure so I could walk on top of it. Something like a centipede with many segments and as long as my arm had coiled itself around my left leg and tried to bury sharp-looking mandibles into the material of my suit.

  The Xenobiologist, Rebecca Dunns, made her Atlas suit look petite. She grabbed the thrashing thing and placed it, not without difficulties, in an unfolding stasis box. “Could be an Amel, originally from Troga, but six times the original size.”

  TheOther stomped past me, and he truly looked terrifying in that battlesuit as his had four arms. “What amazing technology these new suits are! I was always in awe at the Quasimodos and I remember well how Union marines fought us wearing them. Now, I am wearing one that is so much advanced I believe I could hold an entire Y’All landing force off all by myself with it.”

  I laughed. “You terrified the crew of an entire ship, that’s for sure, ripping airlocks out of their sockets like paper.”

  “Ah, yes, true, but it was a battle and I had little time thinking just how marvelous these Atlas suits are.”

  Narth and Dien uncovered an elaborately-decorated five meter-long object from the dirt. It had a dull metallic color and roughly looked like a giant ear cleaner with round ends on each side. A red crystal-like object was embedded on one side. The coloring and the shape reminded me of the round spheres I had found in the Cave of Things. This reddish crystal sphere, however, had the appearance of being damaged.

  I watched my small landing party dig through the trash and kept looking over the depressing landscape, with one eye on the battle sensors. I turned to the big creature next to me. “Do you think the Y’All will return?”

  He raised his upper arm pair. “I was what we called a Battle Drone, captain. I was not given much information. I was grown in a vat along with 10,000 exactly like me and came to this Galaxy aboard a Hatching Ship. I know less about the true motives of my kind than you. My purpose, and only purpose, was to destroy and kill. I had no other reason to exist. When I questioned that existence and wanted to know more, I was declared damaged and malfunctioning and my section commander put me in stasis for further evaluation. I was scheduled to be disassembled along with the other Y’All you found.”

  He made a very Human sigh and continued, “I found killing and destroying without reason very disturbing. Be assured, I will defend you and the ship and my friends, but I would have a hard time following an order to kill without a very good reason.”

  I watched Narth and Dien poke through the trash, obviously searching for more artifacts, and then saw the petite Xenobiologist transferring something struggling and slimy with lot of legs into another specimen container.

  I said to the Y’All, “I think this is a good philosophy, and I promise you I won’t order you to kill without a reason, but our mission might require that we terminate individuals.”

  He turned his entire body to look at me directly. “It will have a reason though. We are defending the way of life of the Union, a place where even one like me receives mercy and a chance. With you, I am an individual and the very concept of having friends is a very good reason to fight.”

  I wanted to say something but my sensors picked up a Human-shaped heat source hiding underneath a crate not too far from Narth. I did not read any energy sources indicating weapons or shields, so I went toward that crate to see who was hiding there. Something hit my suit, at the chest area.

  The suit computronic switched to battle mode and said, “Chemical projectile weapon impact, threat level zero.”

  The sensors homed in on an extremely dirty man crouching behind a wall of trash, aiming a weapon at us. Next to him was a Stik alien armed with a spear.

  TheOther turned into a lightning-fast, running battering ram and plowed through the dirt and trash like a cannonball, pieces flying everywhere, and grabbed the Human with one hand and with another hand a gangly, tall, and somewhat thin Human alien.

  The crate before me flew to the side and a meager, dirty girl was exposed and floated into the air, held by Narth’s telekinetic powers, but I sensed Narth having trouble at first. I lowered my gun to shoot her.

  Narth’s voice said, “No, Eric, please do not shoot. I have her now!”

  TheOther carried the struggling man; he wore only rags and was barefoot. The tall alien was in no better shape, almost completely naked, dirty and wounded. The weapon, some kind of rifle, was bent into a pretzel in one of TheOther’s other hands.

  The man screamed in perfect Union Lingu, “Let her go, you bastards! Let her go! She means no harm! Let her go!”

  Narth just looked in my direction and I nodded. Narth said, “We mean you no harm either. It was you who shot at us, and I know you only did it to protect that female.”

  The man stopped struggling, and TheOther let him go.

  I said to the dirty man, “No matter how fast you try to run, I am faster. So, stay until we are done talking to you!”

  The alien being did not move, it simply hung in the huge fist like it was dead.

  The dirty man did not relax and eyed us with open mistrust. “You must be Union. No other society in the Universe would poke through trash with million credit equipment and collect vermin.”

  I said, “You appear Human and you don’t speak Freezone Squawk. Are you a Union citizen?”

  His head sank. “Not anymore, I did some bad things a few decades ago and fled to Sin 4.” Now he lowered his hands in a resigned gesture. “I’d say take me. I would give up. I’d rather face charges at home than spend another day in this hell, but I can’t. I must protect her and stay with my friends here.”

  Narth said, “Captain, this girl has tremendous psionic powers, almost on par with mine, and she is in great danger to harm herself as she has no training at all.”

  Our tiny Xeno scientist held out a ration bar to the girl. “Are you hungry?”

  Narth examined the tall thin alien. “He is seriously injured.”

  The girl was incredibly filthy, and her hair resembled the dirtiest mop in Midrill’s broom closet. Somehow, she reminded me of Exa, but compared to this one, Exa was sparkling clean the first time I saw her. This girl was also very thin and meager, and looked malnourished. She had big blue and incredibly sad eyes.

  She nodded at Specialist Dunn’s question but didn’t take the bar; instead, she looked over to the man.

  He said, “Go ahead,
Alice, take it. These are real Union soldiers like I told you so often about.”

  She took the bar and ripped it open and wolfed it down like an animal. I noticed the longing eyes of the man, so I opened my emergency ration compartment and handed him a bar as well. At first, he tried to maintain some dignity but his hunger won and he, too, tore it open and literally inhaled the bar in two or three bites. They both got two more and finally, he chewed slower and his eyes glowed with bliss.

  “Oh, God in heaven, I never thought a RICE bar would taste so good.”

  I was certain he was Union, perhaps even with military background, as he knew the acronym for these Ration Individual Combat Emergency bars.

  I said, “I think it is better we take you all to the ship, have our med officer check you out, and get you a real meal. That Stik friend of yours really needs medical attention. I give you my word that if you want to leave, you can. You are not under arrest.”

  He nodded. “The word of a Union captain is enough for me. I know you are Fleet, even though you try to hide it, especially with the others calling you Captain and you having RICE bars with your equipment.”

  I frowned. “Let’s make sure no one else comes to this conclusion. Let’s go back to the ship before someone else does pay attention to us.”

  Narth asked the man holding up the artifact, “Have you ever seen any artifacts that look like this Stik?”

  The man looked at it and then nodded. “Yes, Gothar the Dealer has four cases with the same markings standing in his store. There are little round crystal balls in them just like the busted one in that staff.”

  Narth said to me, “We must return here, captain. We must recover those cases. If I am right, then we have discovered a find perhaps more important than hunting pirates.”

  This was a strong statement coming from my friend, and I knew he never exaggerated. I nodded. “Then return we will.”

  We returned without further incident to the ship. While we thoroughly decontaminated the landing tank, the suits, and ourselves, I thought about the words of the Xenobiologist concerning the decontamination process that previously was so routine I barely noticed it, and it now become much more significant to me.