“I see. They could fit on a Tars -class transport freighter , couldn’t they.”
“They could, but...” Cfadiss furrowed his brow. He was only getting more and more confused; what was she scheming?
Tars -class ships were small-scale transport freighters that accompanied reconnaissance half-fleets. There were also rébhath (troop ships), but those housed 1,500 at the most. Even if they were to save on living quarter expenses by inducing cryogenic sleep on all of the new passengers, they would be able to fit in no more than around 10,000 people. If 25,000 people were to board, it’d be physically filled to capacity. Moreover, transporting prisoners of war required the presence of an appropriate number of escort NCCs aboard.
“Run the numbers, will you? We will be bringing 25,000 aboard a Tars transport freighter . How long will it take, by ship’s time, to get them to the imperial capital Lacmhacarh traveling through normal space ? And you needn’t spare any thought to deceleration. I don’t mind spending all of our fuel accelerating at two daimon of G-forces.”
“Traveling only through normal space ?” he asked back in spite of himself.
“Correct. Now calculate.”
And so he was forced to start crunching the numbers.
“Distance from the enemy now 0.1 light-seconds,” somebody reported expeditiously.
Using his compuwatch , Cfadiss summoned up detailed specs of the Tars class, and determined the acceleration duration and final velocity in view of the mass of 25,000 people and the food and water they would need. Making sure to apply the rotation speed of the galaxy in his calculations, he divided the distance to the imperial capital by the speed, then factored in the time dilation rate...
The result was just as absurd as he expected.
“It would take around 58,300 years...”
“Is that so,” said Sporr. “I don’t believe our prisoners would be too elated to discover it will take that long.”
“I should think not...”
“Then let’s make it a shorter, faster trip for them. They won’t need a space-time bubble engine , nor a roïlagac (attitude control engine). Nor any crewmembers . While we’re at it, let’s do them the favor of removing the gravity control system . Though even then it’d be too heavy, wouldn’t it? Have you included food and water in your calculations?”
“Yes, one year’s worth, and then a hydroponic plantation facility of the smallest possible dimensions would need to—”
“Oh, there won’t be any need for hydroponics. Get rid of it for them, won’t you?”
“I could also remove their food, drinking water, and air purification system if you wish?” said Cfadiss, reluctantly setting foot on her train.
“Don’t be stupid. They’d die if we did that. We could never be so cruel... Now then, the ship must have gotten quite light by now.”
“Not appreciably lighter than before, I think...”
“Be a dear and run the numbers.”
Cfadiss did so. “It will take about 49,100 years.”
“See? We’ve saved them nearly 10,000 years. That’s an appreciable difference, and I won’t hear otherwise.”
“Well, that is true, but...”
“Communications Staff Officer !” Sporr raised her command staff and let fly her orders. “I have a message for all ships. No ciphering. I’m amending my orders. You are to absolutely respect any inclination on their part to surrender. However, those who surrender only after battle has commenced will be taken to Lacmhacarh through normal space only. The transport freighter that is to ferry them must, with an eye toward necessary time saving, be divested of frivolities such as its space-time bubble engine , gravity control system ,and its attitude control engine . No crewmembers are to board, either. The prisoners shall be given one year’s worth of food and water for their trip. The amount of time it will take them to arrive will vary depending on the number of prisoners, but as of now it’s estimated at around 49,000 years. In addition, the maximum occupancy of the transport freighter in question is 1,500. That is all.”
“Please wait, Lonh !”
“Silence, Senior Staff Officer ,” she asserted. “This is my final decision. I will consider any further words of counsel as insubordination.”
“What a logh labyrena (maddening maid)...” he blurted out.
Sporr put the back of the hand that was holding her command staff to her mouth and laughed a mighty, boisterous laugh. “Ho ho ho! I do like the sound of that title for me!”
Cfadiss was at a loss for words.
“Distance from the enemy now 0.09 light-seconds.”
He stood stock still, focusing on the enemy ships he could sense through his frocragh were steadily increasing their relative velocity as they approached.
Then, abruptly, the increase in their relative velocity slowed. In fact, the only fleet accelerating was now the Ftuné .
“The enemy has ceased accelerating,” reported the navigation staff officer , lending yet greater credence to what Cfadiss’s frocragh was telling him.
“The signal of surrender , ma’am,” reported the communications staff officer with audible relief. “The enemy is requesting to be treated ‘with magnanimity.’”
Phew . Cfadiss exhaled the hot air that had built up in his lungs.
“But of course,” said Sporr, nonplussed. “I never fail to treat prisoners of war with the utmost lenience.”
If what she had in store for them before was lenient, then I’d hate to be treated “with magnanimity,” thought Cfadiss.
“Lest you worry, we will be transporting them through flat space . I of course guarantee them a pleasant journey. If they’re well-behaved and luck is on their side, they might even eventually tread their homelands through a prisoner exchange, and without even needing to get atomized first!”
“Allow me to relay,” said the communications staff officer, who then faced the console and began the transmission.
“Senior Staff Officer .”
“Yes?” Cfadiss replied nervously.
“I hate fussing over the little things. I’ve no desire to bother you, but...”
“Understood. I shall allocate ships to raid and commandeer the enemy’s vessels at once.”
“So quick on the uptake.” She tapped her cheek with the tip of the command staff . “But always remember: I also hate being interrupted. Particularly when I’m giving orders.”
“I apologize.”
“Now then, make it so. Allot Numbers 1 and 2.”
“As you command.”
“The other squadrons will take control of Clasbule’s skies. Is that agreeable?”
“As you command,” repeated Cfadiss with a salute.
Two hours later, the reconnaissance half-fleet Ftuné took position 20 saidagh above Clasbule. Upon conducting surface recon, they discovered to their surprise that there were still several UH land war units deployed. It appeared that the troops aboard the captured freighter were a small part of a larger force.
The Ftuné was not built for land war — though it’d have no trouble turning an entire planet into a lump of lava — so they advised the enemy troops to surrender from their station above, demanding order be restored to the territorial citizens . However, due to some powerful jamming, that message got scrambled, and they couldn’t be sure it had made it to the surface. The Ftuné awaited the arrival of the land war units even as they prepared against potential attack from the surface.
Sporr sighed. “They sure don’t know when to give up, do they? And nahaineïocs (war on a terrestrial world) lacks all elegance, too. But I can’t complain. Because fortunately, I won’t be the one wielding command!”
Chapter 6: The Bhoüécoth (Great Chase)
The rattling din of tremors was followed by a fresh hail of stone shards.
“Looks like they haven’t called it quits yet,” said Jinto, picking up his pace. “They’re planning to blow up the blockage so they can get at us!”
“We ought to thank them for making us a path back,
” said Lafier.
“You know, as long as I’m with you, I’ve got nothing to fear. The universe is filled with hope.”
Over an hour had passed since the battle. The two were still trudging through the cavern, with all of its many twists and turns. They could tell it was sloping upward now, albeit only slightly.
Which means we’re headed towards the upper reaches, thought Jinto.
They were tracing a line back up a tributary of the lava rivers that flowed across the planet several hundred million years ago. Once again, their ears were met with that familiar clamor. It seemed as though the path had not yet been cleared. Meanwhile, the passage was getting narrower, and Jinto was feeling steadily more restless. He couldn’t help but entertain the possibility that they’d soon hit either a dead end or a place too narrow for human traversal.
Sure enough, they reached a point where they could no longer walk side by side. Jinto led the way and they advanced ever further, but they were losing confidence; was there any actual point to this long march of theirs?
At last, the phaser shed light upon the end of the road. Gripped by despair, Jinto stopped in his tracks.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lafier.
“It’s a dead end. There’s nowhere to go from... wait, hold on...” Jinto craned in to give it a closer look. It looked awfully smooth for a natural formation. Sliding his hand across its surface, he could tell it was, in fact, a crystal stoneware wall. He could even make out a seam running vertically down its center.
“This thing’s a DOOR!” Jinto shouted, astonished.
“A door?”
“Yeah. That’s all it could be.” Jinto tried rubbing the door, pushing at it, and more, but it didn’t open.
“There’s something over there,” said Lafier, clasping him by the shoulder and pointing toward the door’s right.
He shone the light where she indicated, and found there some controls , along with the words FOR EMERGENCY USE. Timidly, Jinto pressed the button.
The door split open, and a vertical line of light trickled through. That line would soon become a rectangle of light, which grew wider before their eyes. Jinto squinted against the dazzling brightness, and took a cautious step.
Lafier followed, and scanned their surroundings. “Where are we?”
“Don’t ask me...” Jinto whispered, scarcely believing.
“Looks like an amusement park.”
Easy-listening tunes were playing in the background. A sprawling flower bed lay in front of them, and beyond it, a short building made of stone. The shrill voices of children were audible from somewhere in the distance. On the footpath that ran the length of the flower beds, people were walking alongside various cartoony animals: bears, dogs, cats, elephants, serrows, walruses... each one was human size, and bipedal. Moreover, they were conversing with the kids, and performing tricks. They saw a deer sitting on the lawn giving several children a listen, and in another spot, they saw a lion juggling flaming torches. They were probably animatronics, but they could also be people in costumes. The horses were the only quadrupedal species among them. More were carrying children than not, and so they seemed to function as the park’s means of transport. A fox in clown getup crossed right in front of them while riding a unicycle.
Jinto watched the fox go by, and gazed up. The metal framework went quite high, as did the ceiling made of a semitransparent shroud, most likely synthetic resin . Friendly-faced animatronics were dangling from the ceiling as they lifted excitable tots up and down. It was when he noticed each sported eight appendages that he realized they were spiders.
When he looked behind them, he found the door had already closed shut. THIS DOOR IS OFF LIMITS was written in large text.
Jinto glanced Lafier’s way, and beamed. “You look like trash!” And at that moment, that was all there was to say, for they were covered in grit and mud from head to toe, to say nothing of their dishevelled hair.
“You all the more,” she replied as she patted at her clothes. “You look like someone rescued you from a garbage chute just as you were about to get disposed into space.”
“I can imagine,” said Jinto, who patted the pebbles and assorted filth from his hair.
A child holding hands with a rhino pointed toward them.
“What a rude little snot, pointing and laughing at a royal princess like that.”
“He was laughing at you.”
Even under army occupation, the amusement park seemed to be thriving. A sense of security was simmering inside them. With this many noncombatant terrestrial citizens , particularly children, the UH wouldn’t go all out on them.
“C’mon. If we’re lucky, we may just come by some new clothes.”
“Right.”
But just as they were about to set off —
“Please stop,” came a voice from above. “You have entered the park from an entrance other than the proper, prescribed entryway. Kindly wait as our security personnel come to ask you about your situation. If you do not comply, be advised that we may report you to the police.”
They looked up toward the voice’s source, and there hung a giraffe’s head. Though its shoulders were around the same height off the ground as a human’s, its neck exhibited the primary feature of the giraffe in spades.
“Not happening!” Jinto urged Lafier to follow him as he booked.
“PLEASE STOP, PLEASE STOP, PLEASE STOP...” The giraffe waddled awkwardly after them.
“Attention, customers,” sounded the parkwide announcement. “A state of emergency has arisen. We repeat, this is a state of emergency. We truly apologize for the inconvenience, but we will be closing GUZONH DREAM PARK temporarily. You will be refunded. Please line up at the exit and leave the premises. As long as you conduct yourselves in an orderly fashion, no harm will come to you. Kindly follow the instructions of the staff, and exit calmly and safely. We sincerely await your next visit. We repeat: This is a state of emergency...”
“What is this ‘state of emergency’?” asked Lafier.
Jinto looked at the gun in his hand, then at the giraffe chasing them. “If it’s not us, then I couldn’t tell you.”
In Clasbule’s infancy, this place was a lake of lava. From that lake flowed two rivers. The wider river carried large quantities of boiling hot rocks from the lake, while its less impressive counterpart merged with other lava flows and poured into the wider one in the end. When the planet “reached puberty,” the supply of lava ceased, and the lake dried up. The lava either chilled and hardened right there in the lake (thereby contributing to its diminishing size), or it got carried away by the rivers. The lava that hardened after drifting away became parts of Clasbule’s crust. After that, it became surrounded by precipitous cliffs, making for an enormous cavity.
Then humans arrived, built cities nearby, and racked their brains for ways to make use of this giant hollow. Turning it into farmland would require laying paths for the agriculture-bots, but the amount they could expect to harvest from the land wasn’t enough to make those costs worth the trouble. After much wrangling, a plan emerged to make it a zoo. One could create a sealed environment simply by covering the hollow with a circular roof. They would split the area into two separate areas, rainforest and grassland, and then populate them with flora and fauna that had never been transplanted to Clasbule. The proponent of this idea was lauded and praised, and the matter was settled: a zoo would be constructed there. A company was created, and funds collected, to realize their vision. Nothing stood in the way of their project — or so most believed.
The stormy patch came to pass when the roof was completed. The age-old notion that trapping animals in cages was unethical returned in vogue, and commanded a significant chunk of public opinion. The counterargument that the enclosures wouldn’t be overly cramped fell on deaf ears, ignored as a trifling distinction. Ultimately, the choice was made to employ cartoony animatronics in place of real living animals; the academic undercurrent of the project had been forgotten somewhere along the
way, as much that is related to things “academic” tends to be.
With the exception of a handful of animal ecologists, the citizenry was largely satisfied with this outcome. After all, actual animals didn’t do tricks (since training animals was nothing more than a crime of anthropocentrism), nor could they hold a conversation with children. To top it all off, they exuded intolerable bodily odors, and resorted to violence whenever they found something to their distaste. It was far easier to feel safe leaving the little ones with animatronic friends than with beasts of nature. Those who deposited their children could either devote their efforts to work, or enjoy more adult avenues of entertainment.
At present, the 70th anniversary of Guzonh Dream Park’s founding was close at hand.
“They’re here! I was so on the money I could hug someone,” said Inspector Entryua inside Guzonh Dream Park’s administrative office. “But something’s off. There’s not enough of ‘em.”
“We’ve found the Abh, though!” said Kyte, eyes starry.
“True enough.”
Meanwhile, Guzonh Dream Park’s manager, who had had to return the admittance fees today’s customers paid, stared at the screen with annoyance. “Honestly, I’ve got a feeling we’re going a bit overboard here. They’re still just kids, aren’t they? Though they are a bit old to be regular clients, I’ll give you that.”
“That ‘kid’ meted death on my comrades-in-arms,” said the Military Police Lieutenant, grim in the face. “They are brutal killers.”
“Uh, huh...” The manager shot Entryua a questioning look.
“Like I said, you’ve got no reason to worry. I’m sure the occupation will pay for any losses.”
“Well, I’m not so sure. Who knows how long they’ll even be sticking around, what with recent events...” The manager was about to continue that train of thought, but then Kyte’s eyes were on him, and he clammed up.
“What?” said Entryua, curious.
“Around a half hour back, the radio-wave-controlled birds started going on the fritz, you see...” he elaborated, glancing intermittently Kyte’s way as he spoke. “So I had the technician look at them, and he told me the machinery was flawless; it’s the radio waves that’re getting jammed. And wouldn’t you know it, the wireless is out of commission, too.”
The Return to Strange Skies (JNC Edition) Page 8
