The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2)

by Richard Flunker

  “Their Vahe are far more impressive,” Karai pointed out.

  “To us, yes. But to them, the Galaxy, while smaller, is completely foreign,” Ayia explained. “It would be impressive as well.”

  The ship came floating down through the sky. As it approached the sparkling blue-green waters off the coast, the ships powerful gravity field began to displace the water, further adding to its impressive display. As it came to its resting place, the field slowly adapted to allow the water to fill in the space up against the hull. The Alioth Navy’s greatest space-borne ship was now a boat.

  The ship and its crew remained at sea for the next four days. They had to finish their nano-bodies inoculations before they could depart from the ship. Strict measures were set in place to keep the interior of the ship free from the being that tried to infect their blood. The minerals and metals, when brought on board, would be scrubbed of all living agents before passing through into the rest of the ship for processing.

  The sight was truly impressive, but after a few hours, the crowds began to disperse. The next show would come when the Galaxy’s crew was allowed to come on shore in four more days. Until then, the city had a life to live.

  Kale’s crew also had their own things to do.

  “Wait, where are you guys running off to?” Kale shouted out after Karai and Gheno began walking off of the beach together.

  “We’re off to see how they make their Vahe,” Gheno shouted back over his shoulder.

  Kale turned to get some kind of answer from Ayia, but she was already walking off towards the transport. She never looked back. Kale was left standing there by himself. As other locals walked past him, they nodded in recognition at him. He had become popular as word spread of the newcomers. It was not often that the council of elders was called together, and to be the one to address them was prestigious. He began walking back with them towards the city. A small crowd soon formed around him, everyone speaking in the language he couldn’t understand. He stopped for a moment and turned to find his crew again. Ayia had already gone into the transport and Gheno and Karai were far down the beach with another group of locals.

  Kale suddenly felt very alone in a sea of people.

  ***

  Gheno and Karai were equally excited, if for different reasons. They had asked, and been given permission, to see where they ‘grew’ their ships. It was a term they continued to use when explaining about their Vahe, and the two scientific-minded youths were curious. Gheno was interesting in how it was possible to grow a ship. He was just barely starting to get an understanding of the biological basics of Gadoni, where each living being was a blur of plant and animal, or something else entirely. Karai on the other hand, wanted to try to understand how these creatures, without any kind of gravity fields, could fly. It was one thing to propel themselves through the air, but how they managed space flight at speeds that seemed to match if not exceed those of their gravity driven ships was beyond her.

  They had been given an escort of three men who guided them north along the beach away from the crowd that had formed there. They walked north for nearly a mile and Karai, who was quite unused to such physical activity, was breathless. They had to stop for a moment and the lead guide, who quickly recognized her weakness, said something that sent one of his helpers running off the beach and into the heavy forest. They began walking again, but shortly ahead, they picked up a trail that led them into the forest as well.

  They left the sound of the crashing waves behind as they followed the trail deep into the forest. Giant trees with large green and purple leaves swayed in the wind hundreds of feet above them. The forest was clearly alive here, with the sounds of what could only be animals, screeching, hooting and howling. Their sounds echoed through the trees along with other sounds that neither Gheno nor Karai could identify. They walked along that trail over several streams for nearly two hours until they met up with the helper that had run off. They followed him down the trail for just a few more minutes until they reached a small village.

  There were about five houses, all aligned in a circle around a large fire pit. They came through the city and some children ran out to greet them. The lead guide appeared to ask them something, and they pointed off beyond the houses. They followed back beyond the houses the children had pointed at and came across a large open field bereft of any trees. In this meadow were large beasts being ridden by men. They waved at them when they were spotted.

  Gheno stepped forward after the lead guide.

  “Those..._are bears,” he gasped, chasing after the guide.

  “Big, huge, bears,” Karai whispered quietly.

  They clearly resembled the bear from Earth, although this creature was nearly thirty feet tall. Huge, powerful, and jet black. They had small baskets on their backs and the locals of that village were riding them. They came up to them and Gheno stood stupefied, staring right up at one of the creatures. Its strong, humid breath blew his hair back with every breath.

  “This is,” Gheno started, “incredible.”

  The guide talked with the locals on their bear and they pointed to two of the other bears in the field. The guide nodded and took them over. He jumped up on the side hanging on to the basket and pulled himself up into it. He then dropped down a small ladder that unrolled down to the ground. He motioned for Gheno to climb up while the other two guides led Karai over to the other bear and helped her get on. This was going to be their transportation. Karai got into the basket and sat down on the floor and held on to the sides tightly. The guides sat up against the front of the basket and tugged at the bears and both took off on leaps down the trail.

  Gheno hooted in excitement as he bounced. After the initial leaps, the two bears settled into a fast but steady pace. The ride was incredibly smooth after the first jostling. They walked beside each other and Gheno and Karai were able to talk back and forth to each other. Their journey took them down along a valley and a wide path. Down about fifty feet a river had come pouring out of the mountains and continued to splash on its way to the sea. Twice, the path crossed a bridge over the deep river chasm. The cliffs, the path and the river finally came to a rest higher up in the countryside. At that point, the river crashed in a waterfall and they left the river behind. Ahead of them a wide valley with the steep and dark mountains that bore the name of the continent rose up to their right. In a clearing, they could see the coast and the city a good distance away. Gheno couldn’t guess how far it was.

  “Twenty-three miles,” Sentinel chimed in over Gheno’s earpiece.

  “Sentinel, you're here,” Gheno shouted out, much to the guide’s alarm.

  “I am curious about their ships,” the AI said.

  “I have a feeling you and I both have the same idea,” Gheno anticipated.

  “My idea is better, I'm sure,” Sentinel proclaimed. Gheno laughed.

  From that viewpoint, the path trailed back along the side of the mountain before making one last climb onto a plateau. The trees had either been cleared out here or were sparse to begin with. Ahead of them, for miles and miles, was a field littered with brown lumps of varying sizes. They appeared like half eggs, with the other half buried in the ground. The rest of the land was covered in foot-tall thin grass. Scattered along this field were small houses. A woman walked out from the house closest to them and waved out to the group. The guide led the bears forward, leading up next to the house. They easily climbed off the baskets and directly onto the roof of the small house and down a simple staircase on its side. The guide and the woman exchanged words and he routinely pointed back at Gheno and Karai. She didn’t seem pleased at their arrival, but after some seemingly strong words, she took one last look, and waved. She stormed back into the house as Gheno and Karai walked forward. The lead guide said a few words that seemed reassuring, and then began walking back towards the bears. Gheno and Karai stood for a moment unsure of what was coming next. They almost began to walk back towards the bear when the woman appeared at the doorway again. She held out he
r hand. Gheno saw it was dripping with the brown slime.

  “I am Blue Flower and I have been told to show you and tell you all about the Vahe,” she said, after wiping her hands. She had shaken both of their hands and watched with a certain hint of pleasure as the two non-locals shuddered under the initial influence of the gel.

  After the effect wore of, Gheno attempted to introduce himself and Karai to the woman, but she just turned and walked off towards one of the nearest bulges. They rushed off after her. She was very talkative and Gheno was having a hard time keeping up. Blue Flower had started speaking very quickly and with occasional words being misunderstood, Gheno simply didn’t understand what was being said. He tried to ask her questions but her explanations were not making sense. He finally stopped asking questions and let her talk, hoping to glean any bit of information from what she was explaining.

  What bugged Gheno most, though, was that he was instantly attracted to the short Gadoni woman. She was one of the first women on the planet that he saw with shorter hair, just barely down to her shoulders. She was small, not just short, but slender as well, in an athletic fashion. It seemed to Gheno that everyone on the planet was extremely physically fit, but maybe that was the effect of the planet’s unique biology. But beyond her body, she was stunningly beautiful, in a simple way. Her eyes were not slanted, unlike most of the Gadoni and her skin was the greenest of any he had seen, a very clear green. Her hair, as well, was a lighter green than most other Gadoni. Gheno had to make a concerted effort not to keep looking back at her.

  They stopped at the nearest Vahe. It was about forty to fifty feet long and about ten wide. It was clearly half buried in the ground. The outer shell of the Vahe was made of that same brown leathery material Gheno had felt on board the large Vahe that had saved them, if not a bit softer. Gheno reached out and touched the shell, testing the density by pushing in against it. He could feel a soft fuzz all over. He tried to feel for a pulse, or for heat, or for any form of movement that would betray the fact that this being was actually alive. He leaned into it, putting his ear up against the hull and listened. He really hoped to hear something akin to breathing, but it was quiet.

  "So is it a plant?" Gheno asked.

  Blue Flower scowled. "We have very few animals in our world. Also very few plants. The Vahe is neither."

  "Well, thank you for nothing, lady," Gheno said. He reached into his backpack and pulled out his tablet. Blue Flower looked at him suspiciously. Gheno handed the tablet to Karai and reached back into his pack, pulling out a small attachment. It was about the size of his hand with a handle and a wide semi-circle on its end. He flipped it over in his hands a few times until he found the switch. A blue light turned on.

  Gheno took the tablet back and brought up a program to use in conjunction with the hand held device. He booted it up and wirelessly connected the handheld to the tablet. He then handed the tablet back to Karai and asked her to hold it up so that he could see it. Gheno then put the handheld device up against the Vahe, with the half circle touching up against the hull. Instantly, images began to fill the tablet.

  Blue Flower walked up to them, curious. "What is that?" She said pointing at the tablet.

  "This is a sub G-pulse reader," he said, knowing full well she wouldn’t understand. At that moment, he understood what Blue Flower was going through.

  "This device sends a signal into the Vahe here and lets me see how the inside looks like," Gheno explained.

  Blue Flower had been standing there with a look of amazement on her face. As she began to understand what was being displayed on the screen, her look changed to one of fear. She lunged forward and knocked the handheld device from Gheno’s hand. It bounced off the hull of the Vahe and onto the ground, much to Gheno’s disgust.

  “Hey!?” he shouted.

  “Do not hurt her,” she said, “I cannot let you cut into her.”

  Karai picked up the device which had landed at her feet and handed it back to Gheno.

  “We are not cutting into her. Look, there are no cuts. This just lets us see inside of her,” she tried to explain. No matter the vastness of what she had seen so far, Karai was having a hard time thinking of these Gadoni as other than mere savages. Certainly they couldn’t understand the technology they were using and she was not surprised that this woman had displayed such fear in the face of such magic.

  “How can you see inside of her without cutting into her?” Blue Flower asked.

  “This right here,” Gheno said, regaining his composure once again and waving the hand held device, “sends vibrations through the Vahe. These waves move through her and back and tell me what’s inside.”

  Karai rolled her eyes. She expected the local to have no idea what Gheno had explained, even if he had in such a simplistic manner. What she did see, instead, was recognition.

  “Like the Threadweavers. They come here to find the good Vahe, and they touch them and feel the threads that move through them. They can see which ones will make good Vahe,” Blue Flower said.

  “Yeah, that probably would work. If we had a way to measure quantum strings the result would be the same,” Gheno said.

  Karai looked back at the teenager. He did not have the bias that Karai had and had never looked down on these people. He also understood her explanation well.

  “Only Threadweavers can do that. I have never seen the inside of our Vahe, even though I take care of them,” Blue Flower said, stepping forward. Gheno knew what she wanted. He turned the device back on, took the tablet from Karai, and handed it to Blue Flower. The images began displaying again. Blue Flower’s eyes grew in size. She started pointing out things within the Vahe using words that didn’t translate. Gheno also watched the tablet. He switched from the normal gravity pulse to an EM reading along with the pulse. It displayed energy sources and could pick up even the smallest hint of electrical energy from a biological source. It overlaid that display over the gravity pulse. The image lit up in blues and reds.

  “What is that?” Blue Flower asked.

  It was Gheno’s turn to be amazed. In his ear, Sentinel came to life.

  “Gheno. That is a…” the started to talk, but Gheno already knew the answer.

  “That’s just like a helix based bio cell. Just…way larger…and webbier,” Gheno said, breathing excitedly. “Sentinel. Do you see this?”

  “I just said I did.” Karai stepped forward to see the tablet as she could hear what Sentinel was saying in her ear piece.

  Gheno reached out and asked for the tablet back from Blue Flower. She stepped back behind them to keep looking at the images.

  “Sentinel. Can you upload sections five through eight from last month’s tables? The ones we worked on?” Gheno asked.

  The main image on the tablet separated into a smaller image and three other images opened up next to them. Two were drawn diagrams and one was a digital recreation. The images looked like complex webs in varying and growing patters. Gheno began to look at his pictures and compared them to the image being fed to him from the Vahe. Gheno turned to Blue Flower.

  “How old is this Vahe? You know what? I’m not sure that’s the right question,” Gheno said, contemplating a bit, “What stage is this Vahe in? Is it ready to be, used, or whatever you do with it?”

  Blue Flower stood back for a moment, thinking.

  “This Vahe is ready for its change. The Threadweavers will come by soon and begin its change.”

  “What does that mean?” Gheno asked. Karai was curious as well.

  “The Threadweavers will sleep with the Vahe and will dream with her. The dreams will show her what the Vahe can become and the weavers will guide it to that purpose. Then the Vahe will start growing again and turn into that purpose.”

  “Uhm. Sleep with the Vahe?” Gheno asked quietly.

  “So the weavers can make them into space ships or boats or whatever?” Karai asked.

  “They will guide the Vahe to become what is needed. Yes, even a boat,” Blue Flower said with a smal
l laugh.

  Gheno turned around again and began looking at the tablet.

  “It’s like a blank slate Sentinel. Remember the images we took from that capsule that had Deespa? Her brain was like that, a blank slate and your predecessor molded it to her fashion. Look at this structure. It’s even far more complex. And look at all of these nodes,” Gheno said, pointing at small bulges within the web like lattice in the image, “I bet these can all be changed as well.”

  Neither Gheno nor Karai noticed the concerned look on Blue Flower’s face. She was stepping back slowly.

  “So these Vahe, they’re alive, but not conscious at all. And the weavers have some kind of way, through their quantum strings, of doing the change and molding them into whatever they need,” Gheno explained to Karai. “I wonder if they are conscious afterwards or not.”

  Blue Flower had walked back to her hut. Gheno and Karai continued to talk to Sentinel, but the native was only hearing one side of the conversation. In her eyes, she saw a man and woman talking to a third person that wasn’t there. She reached just inside of the doorway and took out what appeared to be a small rock and held it up to her mouth. She spoke into it and set it back down. About three minutes later, she was joined by another man and woman and all three stood there watching the two foreigners speaking to a ghost.

  ***

  That night, back at the transport, Gheno and Karai had a long talk with Ayia. Kale was nowhere to be found and was most likely still in the city. Gheno had two large cases with gear in them on the floor in the main hall and several tablets in front of him with all the information he had gathered that day. He had explained his plan to Ayia and was hoping for her permission.

  Ayia sat back.

  “And you say they gave you permission to do this?” she asked Gheno.

  “They said we could have a Vahe. I certainly haven’t told them what we’re going to do.”

  “And they had no problem ‘giving’ you one of their ships?” she asked.