by Francis, Ron
"I really want to, but I'll miss you, too. Will you come visit me?"
"Of course I will."
"Will you bring Commando with you?"
"I think that can be arranged."
Kiah leapt into his arms and started to tear up as she said goodbye. She hugged and pet Commando for a while, then gave Suzy and the rest of the crew each a hug as she left with her new, obviously overjoyed, family. Mayor Valinor looked to Jesse and thanked him again and Seeja embraced him and then they were gone. Jesse knew he would miss that little girl, but he also knew she would be better off, which was the reason for the mixed emotions. As they were almost out the door, Kiah let go of Seeja's hand and came running back to give Jesse one more hug. Then, she left with her new family.
______
The following morning, Jesse had the entire crew, which now totaled nine, in the common area. Even Shadow and Commando were there, excited as they sensed everyone's anticipation.
He began, “The last time I tried to come up with some motivating words, they were almost the dumbest last words in history.” Suzy and Kimi stifled a laugh, Josiah shook his head and the newer members of the crew just looked around with puzzled expressions, wondering about the inside joke. He continued, “But this time, the stakes are different. We’re not about to die, and I don’t have a concussion, so here goes.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Let’s go find some treasure.”
The crew cheered as they laughed, the wolves bounced around in excitement and Jesse gave the order. “Take us out, Lieutenant,” and with that they were on their way to what Josiah had called the adventure of a lifetime.
______
Mayor Valinor could not believe how much meeting Colonel Jesse Marcos had changed his life. Not only had he and his crew saved his life, but they had also cobbled together a vid that painted him and his wife as heroes. Tarrick had always thought himself to be a good man, but not a hero. Not only that, but they had agreed to give him the designs and schematics to the incredible medical technology that had saved his wife’s life. When he asked how much it was going to cost, Dr. Baker just laughed as she informed him that Jesse didn’t want payment. But most importantly, he had given them Kiah, he couldn't wait to adopt Kiah. She was home with Seeja now, or out shopping for new clothes, he wasn't sure. He just knew his life would be forever changed for the better having this amazing little girl in their lives.
He now had two main orders of business. He had left Eliphaz in charge while he took a few days off following the ordeal, so he could recover and spend some time with his family. But now that he was back, public priority one was to begin reform on the way orphans were treated in Kaldorian society. His scheduled adoption of Kiah should be a good first step. Priority two was to enact laws that would allow for a better standard of living at the outposts. He was surprised to learn that his decision to send ships into orbit and soldiers to rebuild the outpost was a very popular one. He believed that the vid had shown people how hard life could be on their own planet while they lived a life of luxury. Many people had sent transmissions to the Mayor’s office offering assistance and making helpful suggestions. That had heartened him greatly, reinforcing his belief that he was doing the right thing.
On a personal note, his mission to see how far Topanar’s corruption had spread was also going well. He had found a dozen law enforcement officials that he knew he could trust. He had then conscripted them into a special unit, reporting only to him. They had already begun to uncover evidence that could put Sub-Mayor Topanar in prison for a long time. He didn’t want to move on the information until he at least had an idea of how far the corruption had spread. Colonel Marcos’ idea to not alert Topanar to his suspicion was sound. Not letting his enemy know that he knew of his corruption had enabled him to uncover a lot more of the problem than he might have been able to do otherwise.
He could not believe the sheer amount of illegal activity the Sub-Mayor had a hand in. Kaldor City had no known criminal organizations, but if they did, Eliphaz Topanar would have been at its head. He hit a button on his desk and called out, “Miss Aznuah, please contact Agent Sandstorm and have him report to me as soon as possible.”
“He’s on his way, Sir,” the secretary curtly responded.
______
The treasure hunt was a full two weeks old and thus far spectacularly uneventful. They hadn’t run into anymore pirates, which was good news, but they also hadn’t run into anything useful or exciting. This adventure of a lifetime was likely to take just that: a lifetime. Collin was at the helm and Suzy was on the bridge with him, learning more engine nuances from Collin. He had already had her in the engine room twice to learn how to tweak the engines for maximum efficiency. Now he was lecturing her about the engines the same way she always lectured him about medical information and taking care of himself.
The thought of a grease-stained Suzy switching careers to become a ships mechanic made Jesse smile. As he was smiling, he heard a voice ask, “What are you smiling about, Colonel?”
He hadn’t seen or heard Cassie come up to the couch. He had assumed she was with everyone else, gathered around the common room table, which had become the center of all treasure hunting activities. He needed a break, so he had come over to sit on one of the couches and relax. Now the lovely Captain Reed was here sitting next to him.
“I was just thinking about Suzy fixing ship engines for a living.” He replied with a smile. "Collin has been bugging her about helping him with the engines ever since she fixed them on her own a week ago. How's the treasure stuff going?"
"Slowly," she groaned, "I needed a break. I hope you don't mind me joining you here."
"Of course not, I was bored, too. I guess we could be bored together." They both chuckled a little bit as they relaxed on the couch, waiting for lunch time.
______
Lunch was just about ready, and everyone was around the table except Josiah. Collin had put the ship on autopilot, activated the cloak and was sitting next to Kimi, arguing about which continent on Earth had the best footballers. None of the Kalephi galaxy guests had any idea what they were talking about, but they seemed to be enjoying the lively debate. Collin began to explain the game of football or soccer as it was also called to the new crew members.
"Josiah and the Colonel played it in secondary school. They won their city championship twice." Suzy smiled as she joined the conversation.
"That was a long time ago, I'm too old for that sort of thing now." He winked at Cassie and Kora as he took his seat.
"Says the man that played not one, but two rec leagues games in one day, just three days before we left for this mission." Suzy playfully added.
As they were eating, Josiah came into the room at a run. He was dripping with excitement, and yelling, “I found it.”
He, of course, had everyone’s attention. “It’s the maps,” he continued. “We thought we had three separate maps, but we didn’t. It’s all the same map.”
The rest of the crew still looked a bit confused, and Kora asked, “What do you mean?”
“When you place all three maps on top of one another” Josiah continued, his excitement barely contained, “And then you shine a light through it…..”
“It makes a different map,” Cassie excitedly yelled
“Exactly! We have a location,” Josiah exclaimed.
“For the treasure?” Kimi excitedly asked.
“I’m not sure if it’s a location for the treasure or just another clue,” Josiah admitted. “There should also be an artifact in a nearby location. The pirates no doubt have copies of the same map fragments we have, so it’s only a matter of time before they find it, if they haven’t already. Consequently, we should be on our way.”
Collin looked over the map to deduce the coordinates. “No problem, according to our star charts, this looks like a short jump in light space.” He said, as he made his way to the bridge to set in the coordinates.
______
As Collin left the common room to
head to the bridge, Jesse began to think of the wonder of light space. Light space had only been discovered four hundred and thirty years earlier by Dr. Stephen Hightower in an accident that sent him almost a hundred light years from Earth in under a minute. Fortunately for the good Doctor and his crew, he was able to figure out what had caused the accident. He then recreated the circumstances to get them home. They had only been gone a couple months before Hightower and his crew returned. After figuring out how to duplicate the circumstances, Hightower learned how to control the circumstances and the first Faster Than Light, or FTL, drive was created.
Light space is achieved when the ship’s FTL drive opens a seam in reality; the ship is then drawn into a dimension outside of normal space time, and the drive seals the seam on the way in. When the drive is powered down, the ship returns to real space, sealing the seam on the way out. It has been best described as taking a short cut through space time.
Jesse never understood why it was called light space because one would actually be travelling much faster than the speed of light once light space was entered. Faster than light space would be a more accurate name for it, but Hightower called it light space for whatever reason, and the name had stuck. No one was about to argue with the man that discovered it? At least the drives were known as FTL drives, so scientists could find some solace there.
Hightower’s discovery couldn’t have come at a better time for Earth. Earth was a dying planet. It was the mid twenty-second century, and Earth’s population had grown to almost twelve billion people. There were no longer enough natural resources to support a population of that size. Earth was only a few generations away from becoming uninhabitable. It had a fleet of cargo ships to make supply runs back and forth to the moon. The moon had become a valuable source of metal resources, and a sizeable colony had been developed there.
It didn’t take the leaders of Earth long to outfit the cargo ships with Hightower’s FTL drives, and Earth’s colonization of the stars began. Within fifty years, Earth had a population of only seven billion and new resources flowing in from ten colonies and six resource planets. Fifty years later, Earth had only four billion people and had colonized twenty planets. After three hundred years, Earth's Coalition had expanded to thirty-two worlds and eleven resource planets. In three hundred years, Earth had found forty-one lush habitable worlds, and while they all had plant and wildlife, none of them had what could be called a sentient species.
Humanity thought they were alone in the universe, and maintained that belief until eleven years ago, when the outer colonies were attacked by the Pack. The only reason Earth and her colonies had been able to fight was because a civil war had been brewing between the Coalition's outer colonies and the core. Military ships were built on both sides in anticipation of the first ever interstellar war, which the outer colonies would have lost. Instead, the Pack came, and the very fleet Earth and the Coalition had created to make war with one another saved them from extinction. After five years and countless lives, the war was ended at the battle of Polisia.
______
While Earth’s history played itself out in Jesse’s mind, he was jolted back to the present by SAMMI’s announcement, “We will be exiting light space to orbit the planet Crunaris in four minutes.”
Jesse went to the bridge to see his crew eagerly anticipating their exit from light space. Light space was beautiful, but one never tired of seeing reality come back into focus. Everyone was on the bridge except Reece and Kora, who had been spending a great deal of time together since the mission began.
As they reentered real space, Collin announced, “Endeavor is cloaked and ready to make planet fall. Where to, Colonel?"
Jesse smiled as he replied, “I’m going to leave that one to Lieutenant Jackson. Lead the way, Josiah.” As Jesse was speaking, he stood up and motioned Josiah to come sit in the Colonel’s seat. Cassie took the vacated seat at the sensors’ console.
Josiah sat in Jesse’s seat and said in his best imitation of the Colonel, “Lieutenant Torrensede, please take us to the smaller continent on the far side of the planet.”
Josiah was rewarded for his impersonation by mock outrage from Jesse and laughs from the rest of the bridge.
Collin, played his part perfectly, enthusiastically crying out, “Aye, aye, Sir.”
As Endeavor touched down in a field almost a hundred kilometers from the nearest settlement, the crew split into three groups. “Collin, Suzy and Shadow will stay with Endeavor,” Jesse began. “Collin, please have the warriorbots on standby in case anyone besides us shows up here.” Collin nodded, and Jesse continued. “Josiah will take Kimi, Cassie and Wennagal in Cassie’s speeder, and I’ll take Reece, Kora and Commando with me.”
“I’ll drive,” Reece interrupted to a couple more chuckles at the Colonel’s expense.
“Now,” Jesse continued while acting insulted, “If there are no more interruptions, we can be on our way. Josiah’s team is after the artifact and my team is after the next clue. We will rendezvous back here in ten hours. Keep in touch and call if you need backup. Collin can make it to you with the warriorbots in under five minutes if he needs to.”
When Jesse finished speaking, everyone grabbed their gear and loaded up. The speeders took off in separate directions, and Suzy closed the landing bay hatch.
______
Josiah hadn’t been this excited since he and Jesse were chosen to begin training for the Space Marines Special Forces. Now, he was in another galaxy, battling space pirates and searching for alien treasure. As they approached the coordinates, they looked up and saw a large ancient structure. It looked as though the structure was thousands of years old, and time had not been kind. It was apparently a palace that predated technological advancement. Two thousand years ago, it was most likely one of the wonders of Crunaris. There were high walls with towers at each corner, although the walls had been broken through in many places. Each wall was made of a different type of stone. The towers were each a different shape and each of the towers was made from one of the stones that made up the palace walls. They rose another fifty meters from the top of the walls. The first tower was triangular, the second tower was octagon-shaped, the third tower was a half-moon and the fourth tower was a perfect square. The roofs of each of the towers had caved in except for the square tower, which, somehow, still looked pristine.
As they entered the courtyard, they saw the palace which had also been heavily damaged. Once again, there were four different types of stone, but this time, they were each present in each wall. The craftsmanship was amazing. Higher up, Josiah could see what looked like a gold icon of some sort. No, it was four separate icons woven together. The palace had four wings surrounding a very large meeting chamber.
“This wasn’t a palace,” Kimi started. “This was a meeting place, most likely for the purposes of peace,” she concluded. She was in awe of the structure, and she was recording all of the details on the vid recorder in her visor’s HUD for further study. She was the only one in the group that opted to wear the visor. Her visor kept track of everything from atmospheric conditions and energy readings, to other life signs in the area. It was an extremely useful tool in an unknown place.
“Sort of like an alien United Nations.” Josiah concurred, using a term that was still in use back on Earth, even though it was technically a United Planets now.
Cassie and Wennagal had been silent to this point, their alert eyes searching for any clue as to where the artifact they were looking for might be.
“No one has been here in ages,” Cassie called out as she tried to read an inscription on the rear wall.
“That is of benefit to us.” Wennagal answered as he was cautiously moving about the room, keeping one eye on the door and one hand on his blaster. He knew Kimi would alert them to any other life forms in the area, but he remained ready just in case.
They searched the ruins for several hours, going into every room, looking for secret passageways or tunnels. They were touching every piece o
f furniture, every sconce and every stone that looked like it might be loose, but they found nothing. They used their equipment to try and seek out any passageways under the complex or find out if anything was made of an unusual material. They even checked to see if there were any faint energy signatures, but they found nothing. They were beginning to get a little frustrated and worried that the pirates would catch up to them, when suddenly something clicked in Kimi’s mind.
“Why was the square tower still intact?” She asked as her three companions stopped their search to contemplate her question. “I mean, the other three towers, the walls and even this meeting hall are all pretty run down. Why is one tower still in pretty good condition?”
Josiah thought about her question and answered, “I don’t know, but nothing is going on in here, so let’s go have a look.”
They made their way outside, and they quickly approached the tower.
“Let’s have a look inside, shall we,” Josiah remarked, anticipation rolling off him in waves. They entered the tower and surmised the room to be approximately ten meters square with a narrow staircase along the wall opposite the entrance. Kimi’s equipment detected no chambers below them, so they began to climb the stairs.
Josiah called out the entrance to Cassie and Wennagal. “Hopefully we won’t take too long in here.”
While they climbed the stairs, they couldn’t help but wonder why the square tower had remained in such good condition. They had climbed to the next level which was even with the top of the wall. There was a doorway leading out onto the wall. Kimiko looked out the doorway which had long ago lost its door and noticed how thick the wall was. The wall had a walkway almost three meters wide and stone emplacements on each side almost another meter wide. Without the benefit of advanced weapons, this wall would have been all but impenetrable.
