by S A Pavli
“Some kind of generator,” I muttered. “But where is the fuel. I circled the box and found what appeared to be a re-fuelling socket. “So someone must come here occasionally to re-fuel this thing. Very odd.” The Radar dish just did not fit with the HCD installation.
My investigations were suddenly interrupted by the Settang’s AI.
“We have intercepted a radar beam.”
“I must have triggered some kind of detector.” I said.
“The radar beam. Is it directed at us?” asked Hamolatonen.
The smooth metallic voice of the AI replied.
“No, it is towards a point, 35 degrees above the plane of the elliptic.”
“Is there anything there?” I asked.
“No,“ the AI replied. “But I have also detected a Hyperspace message directed towards the centre of the cluster.”
Hamolatonen ordered us back to the ship immediately.
Back on the ship we divested ourselves of our spacesuits and joined the rest of the crew on the bridge. We had been joined by Lanatra and Manera and they looked questioning.
“Should we be worried?” asked Manera. “I mean, all this may be perfectly innocent.”
“I don’t see a problem,” said Commra. “Look , they invited us here and set up a detector to let them know when we arrived. What’s the problem.”
“The problem is this Guardian,” I began. “The radar dish and the HCD are made by two different species. The individuals on the murals are not the same as the local inhabitants. The Reptilians have found this asteroid and left the radar here to alert them if someone else finds it. They must have gone inside as well, and they will know that we are not The Makers..”
“I see,” said Commra. “But again, we have no reason to believe that they are hostile.” He turned to me enquiringly. “Captain, how are the language lessons going?”
“We can communicate,” I said. “We have a reasonable vocabulary, but the more unusual the word the more doubt we have about its accuracy. So we have to keep it simple. The reptilians call themselves Saraya by the way.”
“Saraya? Good, well we should stay and talk,” said Hamolatonen. “But be prepared to jump out immediately.”
Chapter 6
Barely two hours after we had triggered the detector, five starships dropped out of hyperspace in formation. They were military ships; their guns and missiles were visible as was their heavy armour. Out of hyperspace, they immediately gunned their rockets and flew in opposite directions, a manoeuvre clearly designed to counter any surprise attack. They took up their final positions surrounding the asteroid at a distance of about ten miles.
The Settang was close to the asteroid which provided cover. We studied their ships carefully before we opened any communication with the aliens. Each ship was about a quarter to a fifth the size of the Settang, about the same size as a frigate, the smallest ship in the EDF. They had no artificial gravity torus, just massive fusion rockets. I reckoned both the Settang and its fighters could run rings around the alien ships. But there was five of them.
We detected some hailing signals and the AI put them up on the 3D. It was the bridge of a starship with three individuals in the forefront. Around and behind them were another five individuals seated at consoles. The screens were flat 2D. The individuals were all dressed in grey-green uniforms with black shoulder stripes. The front trio all wore snappy hats with a black ‘sun shade’ flaps at the back. The individual at the centre of the front trio had multicolour stripes on his hat and uniform. They were the reptilian life forms.
“Ugly buggers,” I muttered. Green bulging eyes, protruding snouts with sharp serrated teeth and snaky green skins. The Captain was speaking and Alfred attempted a translation.
“You have entered a ‘strntack’ (restricted?) area. I am Captain Escrai. ‘Entol’ (Reveal?) yourselves or you will be fired upon.”
We consulted for a few moments before Hamolatonen asked the AI to open a channel. We were transmitting a view of our own bridge with Hamolatonen at the front, his crew around him and myself, Manera and the Guardians seated at the back. As the view of our bridge appeared on their displays the aliens became agitated. The Captain gave a series of shouted orders, then the displays went blank.
“Their ships are moving,” announced the Settang AI. Followed by the shocking “We are being fired upon.”
“Bloody hell! They didn’t waste any time. Alfred, what’s happening?”
“Their ships are under heavy acceleration, in our direction. They have fired a barrage of rockets.”
“What did the Captain shout, just before he disconnected?”
“As far as I could translate it was, filthy Dansai scum, prepare to die.”
“Not too friendly then.”
“It would appear not.”
“Interesting that just the sight of us was enough to trigger an instant reaction. It looks like relations between the reptilians and the humanoids is none too cordial.”
“Alfred, are we intercepting their missiles?” asked Manera.
“Yes, for now. But they are attempting to overload our defences by firing many small missiles. We could destroy their ships easily, our missiles are too fast for their interceptors, but Captain Hamolatonen does not want to kill any aliens.”
“Yes, I can understand that,” I said. I felt the ship shudder a number of times and Alfred explained that he had recommended the use of the ‘Thermal screen’ bombs.“
“Good move,“ I said. These huge thermonuclear bombs set up an umbrella of intense heat that served to either explode or damage any incoming missiles.
Over the next few minutes the alien ships danced around us attempting to overload our defences with missiles without success. At some point, their missile reserves would become depleted, which would then leave them open for a counter attack. They were too far away to use artillery or lasers, so inevitably, the barrage of missiles slowed and ceased. Their only remaining option was to come in hard and fast using their artillery and lasers. At that point we would have to either engage them, or jump into Hyperspace. In the lull that followed, I asked Hamo to contact them again.
“We must make them understand that we are not the cluster humanoids,” I explained. Hamo agreed, as did the rest of the team. We agreed a simple message and our ship’s AI began broadcasting it.
“Captain, please listen to this message. We are not from here. This is our first visit. We would like to talk.” It was the best we could do with our knowledge of the language.
It took a few minutes before Captain Escrai and his crew re-appeared on our screens. It was impossible for us to read the expression on his face; he looked fiercely angry all the time!
“You are not the Engineers. Who are you?” he growled.
Hamo spoke and Alfred translated.
“We are from the main Galaxy. We have come here to find the source of a hyperspace message. From this asteroid.”
Captain Escrai consulted with his lieutenants, their whispers not loud enough for us to decipher. He turned back to the screen
“But you look like the Dansai. Are you related?”
“No,” replied Hamo.
“You are a different species?”
“Yes. Excuse our poor use of your language. We have just learned it. A little. We are a different species.”
“How can that be?” growled the Captain.
“We can explain, when our language is better,” said Hamo.
An individual behind the Captain was whispering urgently to him. The Captain growled and shook his head and the individual spoke more urgently. We picked up the odd word; ‘trick’, ‘Dansai murderers’. The Individual doing the talking had a different uniform from the rest of the crew. He/she wore a white tunic with a bold dark red band around the waist and running vertically from chest to groin.
“Not looking good Hamo,” I spoke into the private crew channel. “That character looks like he has authority over the Captain and he does not trust us. Tell him again that we
are not Dansai.” Hamolatonen nodded but before he could act the view screens went blank. Too late I thought.
“The alien ships are moving into an attack formation.” “Maximum acceleration. Engage Hyperspace Drive,” said Hamolatonen. The ship ‘jumped’ out of the system deeper into the cluster but well away from any inhabited systems, and we paused to consider our next move. The
uncompromising belligerence of the reptilians was a mystery that we needed to understand if we were to have any further contact with these creatures.
I discussed events with Manera over a coffee.
“You notice that the captain of the Sarayan warship said we are not the Aliens,” I said.
“Yes, obviously they have been inside the asteroid and seen the murals. They know what the Makers look like, and it’s not us.”
“We are going to have a problem persuading them that we are not the hated Dansai.”
There were a number of ‘humanoid’ systems close by and we chose one which seemed to have the most radio traffic. It was just a few hours hyperspace travel away,
The Hyperspace jump took us to within 50 million miles of what we judged to be the main habitable planet. We tuned our receivers into the babble of radio signals and Lanatra and I again settled down with Alfred to try and put together a vocabulary of the humanoids language.
Lanatra and myself were joined by Manera, in order to make faster progress. The humanoid’s language was quite different from the reptilians and we were pleased to discover, much easier for us to decode. Their expressions and mannerisms were more similar to human and Hianja as well as the language structure, indicating that brain structure and genetics were related to language structure. Not a surprising conclusion, since we had seen the same relationships between Human and Hianja language structures. Rapid progress was made and after a couple of days we felt ready to talk to our kindred humanoids, (or Hianjoids?).
In addition to the normal news and entertainment channels, we also picked up a large number of digital encrypted channels, many off-planet. The planet was encircled by a network of ships and orbiting stations at various distances, some a few million miles out. We concluded that it must be a defence network of ships and orbitals. Probably a defence against the reptilians we concluded.
We put a few secondary computers on to the task of breaking their encryptions while we got on with learning their language. The surprising thing about both the reptilians and the humanoids was that they both used only one language. So did the Hianja of course, but that was by common agreement; they had dozens of historical languages. Earth had not got around to agreeing a common language yet, and it was a surprise that both the reptilians and the humanoids appeared to have done so, even though their level of technological development was closer to Earth than Hianja.
We were about to set up a comms channel to one of the ground based stations when we were interrupted by Alfred.
“We have broken one of the encrypted channels,” he announced. We were gathered on the Bridge, preparing to send our first message to the aliens.
“Very good Alfred,” said Hamolatonen. “Anything interesting?”
“It is from a reptilian, Saraya they call themselves, one Saraya starship, to another Saraya starship, both in orbit around this planet.” We all stopped what we were doing and looked at each other.
“Come again Alfred? Did you say Saraya ships?” I broke the silence first.
“Yes Paul. The planet seems to be surrounded by a Saraya military fleet.
“So, Alfred, in your estimation, is this an attack, or a blockade?” I asked.
“I would say it’s a blockade,” he replied. “There seems to be no action, and the Saraya ships are standing off the planet, but within the hyperspace jump limit.”
We all took a few seconds to digest that. It was Manera who spoke first.
“That may explain why we were attacked by the Saraya. They are at war with the… Dansai ?”
“That seems to be the most reasonable explanation,” replied Alfred.
“Mmm, what now?” I muttered, to no one in particular. “Should we continue with contacting the Dansai?”
“I think we should take some time to consider,” said Hamolatonen. “We don’t want to go blundering into an Interstellar war between two species.”
Chapter 7
‘Some time to consider’, in Hamolatonen’s words, became three days of indecision. We used our time to expand our knowledge of the alien’s languages and to try and determine what was going on between them. Having broken the Saraya ship’s code, we were able to monitor communications between their starships. Unfortunately that consisted mostly of cryptic military commands and shed no light on the reasons or background leading to the conflict between the two species.
We were however collecting much more information about the so-called Dansai civilization. The picture we were getting was confused and surprising. We were pre-disposed to believe that an advanced civilisation would be based on some kind of universal suffrage but that appeared not to be the case with the Dansai. They were ruled by a group of family dynasties called Tela. Each Tela seemed to be associated with a particular country or geographical area. The head of each family sat on a ruling council called the Ram-Tela.
We had to make a decision about contact, so Hamolatonen called another meeting of the team. I was beginning to wish that the Hianja were not so obsessed with democracy and Hamolatonen would show some leadership, but kept my opinions to myself.
The ensuing discussion produced the consensus viewpoint that we could not resolve anything without making contact with the Dansai. But we were unwilling to put the ship at risk. There was, as far as I could see, only one option, but I was reluctant to voice it. Someone else did.
“The only option is to get a group together to travel to the planet with one of our fighters,” said Manera.
I groaned internally because I knew who would inevitably want to go.
“Very risky darling,” I said. “The team on the ground will be largely defenceless.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “The threat from the Settang is not something they can take lightly. And it does look as if they have enough enemies.” She gave me a significant look. I had to concede she had a point. The Dansai seemed to be in enough trouble already. Perhaps they may even welcome our arrival.
“That is a good suggestion Manera,” said Hamo. “Are we in agreement?” The rest of the team nodded and voiced their agreement. “It remains to choose a crew to go,” he continued. “Hands up volunteers.”
Manera’s right hand went up and with her left hand she grabbed my right and hoisted it up. There was a murmur of laughter around the room and I gave a resigned look around me.
“A man’s gotta do what a woman tells him to,” I muttered.
“That’s the spirit,” said Manera with a grin.
I looked around the room to see just about everyone had their hands up. Hamolatonen nodded at Manera and me, then looked around the room and chose Commander Pariso and then looked at Commra, who also had his hand up.
“Guardian, are you sure you want to go along?” he asked.
“I think at least one Guardian should go,” replied Commra. “After all, we are the most expendable,” he added. There was nods of agreement around the room and he scowled. “I was joking.”
I wanted to say ‘you are supposed to smile when you make a joke’!
“Right,” said Hamolatonen. “Manera and her, sorry, the Captain, Guardian Commra and the Commander. I think we need one more.”
“One more expendable Guardian?” asked Lanatra, waving her hand energetically. Hamolatonen looked doubtful. I thought that he had been developing an attachment to the vivacious Lanatra recently.
“No one is expendable,” he muttered crossly.
“You didn’t say that to me,” growled Commra.
“Seriously, two Guardians would carry some authority,” said Lanatra. “We are dealing with an alien civilization.”
; “No.” Hamolatonen said firmly. “We are dealing with the unknown and I don’t want to risk any more lives than I need to. The Captain and Manera are experienced explorers and can take care of themselves. Guardian Commra is the senior Guardian and it is his choice to go.”
Lanatra looked disappointed , but nodded reluctantly.
“You will be in touch continuously with the ship,” continued Hamolatonen. “Any sign of trouble and we will have a plan to get you out. So, let us talk to these people.”
Deciding who to talk to on the planet was the first problem. Alfred had identified some Dansai military channels which seemed to be our best bet. We sent a series of short narrow beam messages on a number of channels and waited. Predictably, the aliens thought it was a hoax and threatened us with summary execution if we transmitted on the channels again. Next time around they promised they would track us down and execute us out of hand.
“Nice. Friendly,” I remarked to Manera. They eventually worked out that our radio message originated in a region of Space 50 million miles from their planet and that it was therefore not a hoax. They responded with a terse ‘Identify yourselves’.
“They seem to be a bit thick,” I remarked. We had already explained that we were aliens from outside the cluster.
“It is possible we may be conversing with an AI,” said Alfred. “The concept of aliens from outside the cluster is beyond their programming.”
“We should ask them to connect us to their Dansai commander.”
Alfred persevered and eventually announced that he had been given a new frequency and video communications protocol. We were about to be hailed. We were again gathered on the Bridge and the big 3D screen showed a split image, our own bridge on one side and a blank image on the other. It took a few minutes, but the blank image swirled with noise and then a picture of a group of five individuals standing in a semi-circle, with one at front and centre. Behind them was a control room with a number of consoles and large screens on the walls. Other individuals were seated at the consoles. It was obviously an operations room of some sort.
