The Kursas

by George Willson

  “So that night, when everything was closed up, I walked around to the front of the store. Of course, there were bars on the windows, but I didn’t need to climb through the window. I just needed to unlock the door. I remembered the door lock was just that deadbolt that you could turn from the inside. So I took a rock and busted out the front door glass. The alarm was loud, but if they had no security contract, I’d be all right. I reached in and unlocked the door. I took my rock to the counter where I had seen the guns, broke the glass, stole as many as I could in one go, and walked out.

  “I didn’t go far. Didn’t need to. He was waiting for me. Probably watching the store and waiting for me to make my move, and he didn’t want me to take them to anyone else. Just him and a few goons. You know the rest. I was expecting money for services rendered, and I got a pummeling instead. Left me writhing in pain in a worse state than I was before, because now, not only was I still broke and homeless, but I was also injured and a thief. Security contract or not, I heard the sirens, but I could barely move. I pretty well resigned myself to jail before I heard that ding we know so well and light washed over me. I turned my head towards the light and—”

  “Ah,” Blake said suddenly, drawing the others out of the story.

  “What?” Michelle asked.

  “I think I found it,” Blake said hopefully.

  “I’m coming to my dramatic conclusion, and you couldn’t wait one minute to let us know,” Perry complained.

  “I’m sorry,” Blake said. “Did you want to spend more time here, or get out?”

  “Well, you know the rest, I guess,” Perry said quickly to Michelle. “I crawled in, passed out, but woke up with this guy standing over me. I knew at that moment that I sure couldn’t be in heaven.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Michelle said. “Do you think you’ll go back to your mom when you get back?”

  “Eventually,” Perry said. “Once I clean up the mess I made.” He looked over to Blake who was waiting patiently for him to finish. “Well, let’s have it then.”

  “All right,” Blake said. “The signal’s very low level, but so low that it travels well. I don’t know how they modulate it to make different forms, but I would be content to just disrupt it to the point that I can make the metal collapse.”

  “That still leaves the matter of reaching the outside world,” Michelle said.

  “Once we can be sure that we can get the bars out of the way, we’ll work on the next problem,” Blake said. “I doubt the entire ship is made of this stuff, so we’ll still be running up against doors and windows.”

  “How are you supposed to disrupt it with your scanner?” Perry asked.

  “The scanner and the lockpick can interface,” Blake explained. “It allows little things like this while we’re in the field, as it were. Once I add the frequency modulation to the lockpick software, I can add it as a setting for the electronic lock function.”

  Blake pulled the electronic lockpick out of his pocket and pressed a button on the side while he pressed a button on the screen of the scanner. A few seconds later, he put the scanner away and then opened the panel on the side of the lockpick which gave access to the electronic lock functions. He held the lockpick close to the bars and pressed a button on it. The bars collapsed like ice that had been instantly thawed.

  “Well, that worked,” Perry said. Blake tapped the “pool” of metal on the floor with his foot which was already solidified, and Blake gave an intrigued “hm.”

  “Right, now it’s a matter of getting out of here,” Blake said. “I’m open to ideas.”

  Before anyone could respond, a low rumble traveled through the body of the ship before the entire structure jolted causing them to stumble.

  “Did we take off?” Michelle asked.

  “No, something hit us,” Perry said.

  “Which should provide an adequate distraction for us to escape,” Blake said.

  The trio ran to the door of the room and opened it. The hall immediately outside the holding chamber was empty though they could hear distant voices chattering in the Kursas’ language. Blake noted a small three-foot square door about five feet off the ground at the top of a ladder built into the wall.

  “This could be what we need to get out undetected,” Blake said walking over to the ladder.

  “What is it?” Michelle asked.

  “Maintenance tunnel,” Blake said. “Ships like this need access to everything in flight, so these tunnels let their engineers make whatever repairs are necessary possible at any time. For our purposes, though, they are also likely rarely accessed and could provide a way to get anywhere in the ship, one of those ways hopefully leads us out.”

  “How would we find our way in a maze through that?” Michelle asked skeptically.

  “Keep going down,” Perry said. “That’s where we’d ultimately get out, so gravity gives us the best compass.”

  “Exactly,” Blake said. He started to climb to the door when the ship was struck again, but this time, the resulting explosion removed the bulkhead right next to them giving them a view of the outside world about forty feet off the ground.

  Not too far from the ship, the local populace had apparently amassed an army to fight against the Kursas. Ground troops along with a large, armored vehicle fired shots at various locations along the ship’s hull.

  “Or we could make our exit here,” Blake said. “Probably take less time.”

  He looked out the breach and found handholds on the outside of the ship providing a perfect ladder to reach the ground. He swung out and held onto the handles, and they were more than sturdy enough for them.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Perry gestured for Michelle to go first, and with some hesitation, she swung out of the hole onto the handholds. Before Perry could follow, the gap closed of its own accord with more of the malleable metal substance.

  “Blake!” Michelle called out, and Blake climbed back up, carefully passing her on the ladder. He pulled out his lockpick and held it up to the new wall. He activated the program he had just written to melt away the metal, but in this case, it was ineffective.

  “What’s wrong?” Michelle asked. “Why isn’t it working?”

  “The metal the Kursas can reform manually with those headsets must be controlled one way,” Blake explained, “while the ship’s automated repair, which apparently uses the same substance, must work on a different frequency. Probably so they don’t accidentally destroy restored portions of the ship.”

  “What do we do?” Michelle asked. “We can’t leave him.”

  “We never leave anyone,” Blake said. “We are forced, however, to save ourselves or be killed in this onslaught. That wouldn’t help him either.”

  Another blast hit the side of the ship not too far from them, and Michelle took the hint to climb down to the ground. The ship rested on landing gear which allowed its bottom to clear the ground by about six feet, so once they reached the base of the ladder, they had to drop the rest of the way.

  “Quickly!” a voice called out to them from the direction of the attacking army. “This way!”

  With little choice but to trust their saviors, Blake and Michelle ran across the short prairie to the local military who ushered them into their camp without question. Blake glanced back and saw a large group of Kursas advance upon their position mounted on their huge red pandas followed by several aerial fighters that flew out of an upper bay on the ship and fired upon the attacking army from above.

  The Kursas concentrated their firepower on the armored vehicle, and as soon as it was destroyed, the commander ordered a retreat. With a line of soldiers continuing to fire at the Kursas tailing them, the majority of the military along with Blake and Michelle ran into the nearby town.

  They zigzagged down the streets and between buildings to prevent the Kursas pursuers from gaining any kind of clear shot. Eventually, they turned down an alley, and one of the leading soldiers held a door for them to enter a w
ide, two-story building. Once the door was closed behind them, no one else came, and the company sat in silence waiting for the sounds of war to subside around them.

  * * * * * * *

  To say that Perry was panicked when the metal wall repaired itself in front of him would be an understatement. No sooner had the wall come up than he heard soldiers closing in on him presumably to check for internal damage. He had little choice but to follow their original plan of navigating the ship via its maintenance tunnels. He climbed the short ladder to the maintenance hatch, opened it, and crawled inside.

  As expected, behind the door was a long tunnel with branches leading off in a myriad of directions along its length. Perry closed the door to the tunnel as the troops reached his position, and he heard the Kursas speak in their indecipherable language. He held completely still, barely breathing, as they stood an arm’s length from him separated only by an unlocked door.

  It felt like an eternity before they finally walked away without bothering the maintenance hatch. The first thing Perry did was tap the communicator on his shirt, but there was no response. He wondered if something about the ship’s construction might be blocking the signal, and if so, he was on his own. He looked down the tube where he had found himself and believed he could start making his way through the ship in the hopes of coming out the bottom eventually. He knew he would have to exit the maintenance hatch at some point since he thought it highly unlikely that the tunnel would have an airlock to the hull of the ship.

  He crawled down the tunnel looking for any indication of a shaft downward, but he never found any option to descend before he reached the end of the tunnel and had to either follow the bend in the passage or work his way back to choose a different direction. In the months since he had joined Blake in this adventure, this marked the first time he had to navigate a literal maze.

  As he crawled, he felt the ship buffet several more times from impacts delivered by the army he had only seen for a moment before the ship fixed itself. He hoped his almost-rescuers would not win this fight before he had a chance to get out, and he also hoped that he would be able to find Blake once he left the ship. It would not take Blake long to figure out that the ship was blocking their communication signal, but he also knew that once outside, Blake would have his own problems, so coming back together would probably be as tricky as locating the tunnel’s private airlock if it had one.

  He picked a hallway to crawl down deciding to try them all if necessary to find his way out. Just because his starting hall had no exit, that did not mean none of them had one. All he had to do was keep looking and hope the ship was not able to see an intruder crawling through its interior.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Blake, Michelle, and their military escorts sat quietly for quite some time in the dim light of the room. The soldiers were a mix of male and female dressed in mostly blue, but with an orange stripe down the outside of each long sleeve and trouser leg. On each person’s right chest was a series of shapes that likely designated their rank and written vertically in the center of their tunic was an orange strip with their name printed in blue.

  Finally, the woman with the most decorative emblem on her chest, whose name shown as Retinda, spoke up. “Janders, Folen. Give me a report on what’s going on out there.” A man and woman both nodded and rapidly exited the building. Retinda looked at Blake and Michelle. “Are you two all right? We were surprised to see anyone come out of the Kursas ship.”

  “We’re fine,” Blake said. “It was a lucky shot from you that freed us. We were just on the other side of that bulkhead wondering how we were going to get out.”

  “Then you’re welcome,” Retinda said. “Where are you from? Your clothing is strange.”

  “Well, we are actually space travelers who decided to visit your world,” Blake said, repeating the story he had given the Kursas leader. “I’m Blake, and this is Michelle. Unlike our lizard friends, we’re quite harmless. We stumbled on the derelict ship, and the Kursas didn’t appreciate it.”

  “I’m Colonel Retinda, the commanding officer of the Kursas taskforce,” Retinda said. “I’m basically tasked with dealing with our visitors. Tell me, how did you get all the way out there?”

  “Our ship has a matter transporter,” Blake continued with his lie. “We get dropped off on a world to explore it for awhile, and then our ship returns after a few days to pick us back up.”

  “And what do you do with this information when you’re done exploring,” Retinda asked suspiciously.

  “I completely understand your concern, especially in the current circumstances,” Blake said. “We are simply explorers. We want to see the universe and everything in it. We go back and record who we find here and move on. Nothing more.”

  “So you’re not sizing us up for an invasion like the monsters we already have then?” Retinda asked.

  “They wouldn’t tell you if they were,” a man named Darvin said.

  “I can accept that, but they do seem rather harmless,” Retinda said to Darvin. “Search them.”

  Darvin signaled to another woman in the room who searched Michelle while Darvin searched Blake. Michelle was not carrying anything which was a recommendation Blake always made. Darvin came up with Blake’s electronic lockpick and scanner, of course, along with his light, several plastic rectangles the size of credit cards, and a small electronic tablet with an attached pen stylus.

  “This is Major Darvin. He’s been my right hand for years,” Retinda said. “Question nothing he asks of you if you value your life.”

  “And what are these?” Darvin asked.

  “Nothing more than tools,” Blake said. “Go ahead and looked them over. You’ll find nothing malicious or harmful with any of them. None are weapons.”

  Darvin turned each item over in his hands before giving them to Retinda who also examined them. As Blake’s tools were inspected, Michelle leaned into Blake.

  “There’s something not right about them,” Michelle said. “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “You’ve noticed, but only subconsciously at this point,” Blake said. “Once you realize why you used that euphemism, you’ll have sorted out the difference.”

  Michelle stared at Blake hoping he would tell her the answer, but he only smiled and paid attention to Retinda who had been looking at them as they spoke.

  “If I may,” Blake said, “Are you able to tell us why the Kursas are here? I gather they are not native to your world. We might even be able to help you.”

  “No, they aren’t native,” Retinda said. “We found that ship you mentioned a couple of years ago, and seeing the state of the crew, we cleaned out everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

  “Are you sure we should tell them?” Darvin asked.

  “The order of silence was rescinded once the newer ship arrived,” Retinda said. “We have no secrets anymore.” She turned back to Blake and Michelle.

  “We learned later that we had unintentionally activated some kind of distress beacon in the derelict which brought the modern Kursas to us. Initially, they landed next to the ship, and we all stayed out of their way. No one even tried to make contact. I mean, we saw the bodies of the crew. We knew what they looked like. To be honest, we were afraid of them.

  “They made contact with us demanding we return the items we had stolen from their ship. We returned everything we had cataloged over the time we had a crew working out there. Understand that we did not know what it was, or that anyone would come for it. You were there. It looked old.”

  “It did,” Blake agreed, “but you returned what you had taken. What do they want now?”

  “They claimed we did not return everything,” Retinda said. “We’ve gone through our records, and even shared those documents with the Kursas showing we handed over every item we found on the ship. They insist there was another artifact that they need returned or they will not leave.”

  “What item is that?” Blake asked.

  “Their Highmark,” Retinda
said, “Pyrhinia. She claimed that the ship carried something new to them. She said it did not have a word in our language, so she called it what it is in theirs: a forswight.”

  “Forswight,” Blake repeated.

  “What’s a forswight?” Michelle asked.

  “No idea,” Blake said.

  “We don’t know either,” Retinda said. “Here’s the thing about that crash site. It was never cordoned off. We never made the area restricted. We never spoke of it, but other people could stumble across it like you did, and no one would stop anyone from investigating. It was not worth our time or manpower to guard it or keep people from exploring it. If something else was in there that the official excavation did not take, anyone could have it.”

  “Did they tell you what it looked like?” Blake asked.

  “Oh yes,” Retinda said. “That was the only time where Pyrhinia actually cared about helping us. She was very explicit in her description, though she had no pictorial depiction of it. It is in the shape of a perfect sphere which reacts when you touch it. The parts beneath your fingers glow purple when touched, but when inert, it rests as a sort of semi-opaque gray. We have no record of anything like that from the wreck.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Blake said. “I read about something like that once, but much like Pyrhinia, I have no picture in my mind for it. Technological wonders in the shape of a gray ball are not unusual, unfortunately, but I wonder what is so special about this one that she wants it so badly. It’s obviously old since it was on that ship, but it’s so important that it can’t be some silly light show alone. It has to do something valuable to a race intent on subjugating other races.”