The Alliance in Peril

by Peter Lewis Atkinson

  The captain’s name was Mel. She said, “I have travelled on different spacecraft of all descriptions but this is the first time I have had the pleasure of travelling on one of these new cargo freighters.”

  Alenna responded, saying, “Would you and your commander like to have a guided tour of the ship.”

  Interested in any form of spacecraft, Captain Mel without hesitation replied, “Yes, thank you, I would appreciate that.”

  As captain of our ship, I insisted that I would lead this tour, but of course, Alenna would accompany me along with another wife. River was chosen due to her buoyant determination to not let things get her down. River is an alpha female without any doubt. I took them everywhere; the generator room, the waste recycling room, the cargo hold and then to see our shuttle. I demonstrated our hologram room. They had, of course, heard of these but had not actually seen one in operation. They were amazed, as anyone else who sees it for the first time.

  Captain Mel said, “I can possibly see a use for this in the military. A similar program could be used to display a battle scenario.” We did not comment on her words.

  I said, “It’s time to see the most important part of the ship, its bridge.”

  It all went well until Captain Mel spotted the console marked weapons. She peered at it before saying, “Weapons, this cargo ship has weapons?” She then stared at me, expecting an answer.

  I replied, “Yes, it has a turret with two plasma cannons. We had it fitted because we had to go into a declared war zone, my home planet Earth.”

  Captain Mel then said, “Why, Alkarrens would never have the guts to fire a plasma cannon, unless they had the rare determination to be aggressive. I bet you have never used it?”

  “Au contraire,” I replied, “I have, but my wives would have never used it, but then I am not Alkarren and have no hesitation in using the weapon to defend my family. I guess you have not yet heard?”

  “Heard what?” replied Captain Mel.

  I explained, “I had been observing a battle between a Silka mothership and a number of frigates. The Silka ship tried to evade Earths’ defences and in doing so came in my direction. I had an open shot; its shields were down. They can’t detect a ship that has an illusion field activated. As I did not want it escaping and warning others, as it was also unaware that I was there, I fired both barrels at what looked like its bridge. I inflicted critical damage on the Silka ship. It was later finally destroyed by Earths defences. You see humans are not like Alkarrens, we still possess the ability and determination to defend ourselves whatever. This characteristic is found in many Earth males as well as Earth females. The alliance I believe is concerned about our aggressive behaviour. They should not be. Carefully selected humans would make the best soldiers in defence of the alliance, mark my words”

  Captain Mel, in surprise, and I expect a little jealousy said, “You have been in an actual battle? I have been in the military for years and in all that time, the only action I have been involved with was to pursue and capture some pirates.”

  “I’ve done that as well,” I said.

  “Done what?” replied Captain Mel.

  “Captured some pirates,” I said proudly. “You see we had to go to the planet Kelder to rescue some cargo ships that had been disabled by pirates. To cut a long story short, during this rescue my ship was boarded by three pirates and in the process, I captured all three of them. As I said, I will defend my family if we are in danger.”

  Captain Mel a little baffled replied, “My, you’re not what I thought you were. All that action and you are only a civilian and a male at that. I only know of eight captains in the alliance who have up to now seen real action against the Silka, but that may soon change.” She was about to say more but clammed up, I think she had said more than she should have.

  I tried to keep it on topic by asking her, “Do you know Captain Porridy?”

  Captain Mel thought for a second before replying, “Vaguely, she, I believe, is one of the captains that has had some combat experience, but I have never met her.”

  Well, Captain Porridy’s second in command is commander Pooky the youngest commanded in the defence force. Her mother is none other than Yarkeli, the Lusianian we have on board. She and her daughter are regarded as part of my family.

  Captain Mel gasped and said, “Pooky, we have all heard of Pooky. We can’t believe one so young could climb the ranks so fast. She must be exceptionally talented.”

  “She is,” I replied, “I was also her mentor and it was I who trained her to be a pilot. I like to think it was all down to me, but she is a very determined young Lusianian and always accomplishes the goals she sets herself in life. Between you and me I don’t think it will be long before she makes captain.”

  Captain Mel replied, “It’s a big jump from commander to captain, but if she is as determined as you say she is, I am sure she will reach that rank one day.”

  I decided to ask Captain Mel directly, “Is Alto in imminent danger from the Silka? I know the alliance council are worried about something. Don’t try to dismiss my concerns. I have been to the frontier world of Elderring and they have been having skirmishes with the Silka, I was warned not to linger long there.”

  Captain Mel looked uneasy. She begged Alenna and me to move closer to her. She then whispered, “The Silka are of concern. I can’t give you any more information, but please don’t tell anyone what you have surmised. The last thing we need is panic from the public.”

  That confirmed it, I knew in the back of my mind the alliance were very concerned indeed regarding the threat imposed by the Silka. All I could possibly do was to keep probing Mel if I wanted to know more, but she would not say anything more. She just left our galley and returned to her frigate, where I could not ask her any further questions. After that, she would only give me the cold shoulder when I encountered her if I mentioned the Silka at all. Finally, we arrived at Alto. Now, I could only land the freighter at the designated landing port and not where I wanted. We watched as Captain Mel and her commander hovered their frigates from our cargo bay. I could hear some cheering. I looked across to the boundary fence and could observe a small group of Alkarrens that had gathered there. They looked very buoyant and pleased at the sight of the frigates arrival. This again confirmed there was something up regarding the Silka. It was not normal for an Alkarren to cheer for a military craft; quite the opposite would be expected.

  Alenna said, “We must go and check on Lara’s family residence. I promised Lara that I would do this for her family if we ever visited Alto.”

  I replied, “I will first need to see if I can get permission from flight control if we want to fly our shuttle there and back. Let’s go over to flight administration and see if it’s possible.” Alenna, Jenna and I made our way to the reception area. We explained what we needed to do.

  The coordinator said, “You are lucky, we still don’t have the public transport shuttles up and running to and from the district you want to go to.” Please fill in this form.

  Alenna was passed the form and I snatched it politely from her saying, “It requires our departure and destination coordinates and it would be quicker if I fill it in.” Which I did. We were then given a number and the time required to complete our trip there and back. Many more families had now returned and Alto was fast becoming a bustling colony again, just as before the disaster that had befallen it. We had to leave straight away. Now I did not expect to see such a spectacular regeneration of fauna and flora. We passed over many fields that had various crops growing again. We landed next to the residence, there were weeds everywhere.

  I said, “Why is it always weeds that seem to win over other plants?” Of course, there was no answer to that question.

  The neighbours had returned
. My five oldest daughters, who had travelled along on the shuttle with us, went to talk to a number of girls who had been watching us land. Five of my wives had also accompanied me. As we checked on the residence, a couple of females from the adjacent property came to see, as they wrongly thought, Lara’s family had returned. I was left with Luka and Perri and River to watch over me, while Alenna and Jenna decided to converse with them. We took many pictures but had nothing really to report back to Lara. The residence seemed to stand there, as in limbo, waiting for Lara’s family to return. We had checked on the residence, there was no further reason to stay. I just had to find the daughters before we left. They were not that happy about being dragged away from their new found friends.

  During our return flight to the port Ellie said to me, “Dad, I have some information about the Silka. Do you wish to know why the frigates are here?”

  “Yes thank you, Ellie, please tell me what information you have found out and who gave you that information?” I replied in expectation of Ellie freely giving me the information she had acquired.

  “I found out from my new friend Ruby,” said Ellie. “Anyway, what’s it worth to you dad?”

  I was a little rattled that she dared to try and barter with me, so I replied. “What’s it worth! How dare you try and barter over what you have found out. I am you’re father and would expect more loyalty from you. You are my oldest daughter and I would also expect you to set a good example to your sisters.”

  Ellie gulped and said, “Sorry dad, I was only practising for when I am a prime wife.”

  I laughed before saying, “A prime wife, you should be so lucky Ellie, but on the other hand, Alenna always told her family that she would be a prime wife and that came to fruition. Anyway, don’t try to rehearse with me Ellie. Well, what do you have to report?”

  Ellie now explained to me what she had heard, “My new friend mentioned to me that she had overheard a discussion. Apparently, a Silka craft had been seen close to the planet. So it was deemed prudent to offer some protection for the settlers. So that is the reason for the two frigates being assigned to Alto.”

  “Thank you, Ellie,” I replied.

  I now pondered on this new information, the full picture of the alliance concerns seemed to be slowly coming together. What bothered me most, was that a Silka craft was spotted so deep in alliance territory. How could they come and go so easily? I thought their star-drives were not that advanced. What if that information is now out of date. What if they had somehow made a giant advancement in star-drive technology. It was quite possible.

  With our assignment completed, we could now return to Alkarr. What we had been dreading, a summons to appear before the alliance council was waiting for us.

  Alenna at once burst into tears. She was to blame me saying, “Oh Jake! What have you done? We will never live this down, the shame of it.”

  I had sort of prepared for this moment and replied, “We don’t know what this summons is about. It may not be anything to do with Earth learning about star-drive technology. It does not give the reason and it is also marked as none urgent. We have been given a time period in which to appear. If it was serious we would have been given a fixed time to appear.”

  Alenna with a snivel said, “I hope you’re right. I don’t know if we should inform the other family members so they can prepare for the worst or wait until after we have appeared before the council. What would you do Jake?”

  I replied, “Wait, of course, no need to worry the others unnecessarily at this time.”

  We had to travel to Earth in two weeks’ time, so we decided to appear before the council a few days before that and get it over with. Alenna spent the next week and a half worrying. Alenna did not relax when we visited the small cove on Molk. In fact, I had not seen her smile at all since we received the summons. The time arrived and we now travelled to Bartonna. As we didn’t have a fixed appointment, we had to wait outside the chamber until called. We were there almost two hours. During this time Alenna had wound herself into quite a state, spending most of the time pacing up and down muttering under her breath, occasionally looking at me and shaking her head in the process. Finally, we were called. Alenna and I entered the chamber and stood before the council. We could see Erika was there. Erika gave me quite a smile. Surely she would not have done that if we were in trouble.

  The council chairwoman also smiled and said, “Welcome, it’s good to see you both again.” She aimed the following statement towards Alenna, “Alenna we have a couple of assignments we wish you to undertake, are you a willing participant?”

  Alenna did not stop to ask what these assignments entailed. She was just going to do them whatever, just in case they mentioned about Earth obtaining star-drive technology. So Alenna just said, “Yes of course.”

  The chairwoman now replied, “Good, thank you. The details of the second assignment will be given to Lara, to pass on to you at the time when you will be required to undertake that assignment. But first, we wish you to deliver a very large item for us. You will need to deliver this item along with another smaller one to Earth. The items in question are one, a battlecruiser and two, a gunship. Here are the details and coordinates of where to collect them. Have a pleasant journey.” We were passed these coordinates along with the details. We were then whisked out of the chamber, without even being given the chance to ask if we had any questions. We now stood outside the chamber.

  I said to Alenna, “All that worry about nothing, but you do know what the Alliance have just done, don’t you?”

  Alenna replied, “It all happened so fast, “What did the alliance just do?”

  I sniggered saying, “They have made a gift of a battlecruiser to Earth. It has star-drive capability, so the alliance are just as guilty as we are. Perhaps they just don’t care anymore, who knows, but at least we are now out of trouble.”

  I was eager to check the coordinates given along with the full details, which turned out not to be as expected. The coordinates given seemed at first to be located in the middle of nowhere. After a while, I found out that they were located within an obscure solar system, which we had never been to or heard of. They turned out to be within the orbit of a barren world circling a brown dwarf star. Now, I thought wrongly that the alliance had bequeathed Earth a brand new battlecruiser. Again I was being naïve. This battlecruiser had been put into mothballs for thirty years. Its age, well it’s almost one-hundred and thirty years old. It was now my turn to be worried, after all, I would have to pilot the thing to Earth. According to the ship’s details, it was big, very big. My cargo freighter was big, this battlecruiser was three times its length, twice as high and twice as wide. I hoped I didn’t have to land this monster on Earth. If I could get away with it, I would leave it in Earth’s orbit. This came at a good time as we had to go to Earth to collect the ore containers, but what I was not looking forward to was that we also had to collect the locusts as payment for the ore. First, we needed to proceed to the coordinates we had been supplied with. We had to rendezvous with a space station orbiting this barren world, which is named Fraylar. The journey there only took three days. The light from this star was so dim. The planet Fraylar is the second planet out from its sun and was some way beyond the recognised limited habitable zone. Only there wasn’t any planet at all that could be considered within the habitable zone of this solar system. The inner planet was so small with no atmosphere at all, and the outer planets were very cold, hardly any solar radiation reached them. We were given permission to dock our shuttle onto the space station. The space station only had three residents, three Ballar. Now, we very rarely went to the Ballar homeworld. The Ballar had this habit of making a slightly annoying chuckling sound at the end of each sentence. Jenna, as usual, did all the communication, conversing in Zeln between herself and the head Ballar, Lemma.

 
; Lemma welcomed us and said, “We had been informed to expect your arrival. Tee-hee! I believe you are here to collect two of the last four ships. Tee-hee! We had around a dozen a few months ago but over that time they have slowly been reassigned. Tee-hee!”

  Through Jenna, we asked, “Where are they?”

  Lemma replied, “They are both on the surface of Fraylar. Tee-hee! You are lucky regarding the gunship. It was almost scrapped but was reprieved at the last moment along with two others. Tee-hee! Poor Zitter. Tee-hee!” As she said the name Zitter she looked towards the corner of command room. There was a sculpture almost hidden from view by the low-level lighting.

  Jenna did not wait for Alenna and me to comment but jumped in with, “You know Zitter Bobeck. It’s getting to be a small galaxy, so many people have heard of her. What do you think of her art?” Thinking to myself about what Jenna just said, I would not say many people had heard of Zitter, just Lidier and now these three Ballar, well, that we had met.

  Lemma said, Yes we know Zitter and as for her art, it’s strange, but we have grown to like it. Tee-hee!

  I asked through Jenna, “Are the two ships in full working condition?”

  Lemma replied, “They are randomly powered up every now and again and if there is a major problem detected we then have to report it. Tee-hee! Alliance engineers would then be dispatched to sort out any problems. Tee-hee!”