“It will take time, I believe,” Perry said. “How long have you been free?”
“Only a couple of days, I think,” she said. “Time isn’t too clear in here.”
“Have you tried to find a way out?” Perry asked.
“I’ve tried when I can,” she said. “With all of them wandering around out there, you can barely look out without finding one right there.”
“I was going to look for a hatch somewhere near the outside hull to see if I could find an airlock or something,” Perry said. “I have a friend out there who might be able to do something with this.” He held out the headset before putting it around his neck for lack of any better place to carry it.
“If you think you can find a way, then I’m with you,” she said. “I obviously have no reason to stay here.”
“But we have a reason to come back,” Perry said. “I know my friends are out there right now not only trying to find a way to get to me but also working to find a way to make these Kursas leave your planet for good. Now, I don’t suppose you found a tunnel that goes all the way down.”
She nodded and led him down one of the horizontal tunnels.
“What is your name?” he asked her quietly as they crawled.
“Halera,” she replied. “They invaded my neighborhood, and I was taken along with almost everyone else in my area to be death fodder for these creatures.”
“I’m Perry,” he said. “I travel with a couple of others exploring the universe.”
“Sounds exciting,” she said.
“It can be,” he said. “Gets a little dangerous sometimes, though.”
“You run into many dragon people?” she asked.
“No, these are the first dragons I’ve run across, though it does take all sizes and shapes to make the cosmos,” he said. “I’ve learned never to judge by appearances, but these Kursas are definitely unpleasant.”
“Understatement prize to you, sir,” she said.
“This may seem like an odd question, but what species are you?” Perry asked. The woman paused and looked at him, confused.
“What species?” she asked.
“Sure,” Perry said. “Those people are called Kursas, but we say they look like dragons. My species is called human. I’m an explorer, so I just wanted to know what you’re called. And for that matter, we call your planet Zago, but is that what you call it?”
“Oh, I see,” Halera nodded. “We do call our world Zago, so I can only guess your people have spoken to mine before, although, as I told you, until these Kursas dropped out of the sky, most of us didn’t believe there was life outside of Zago. I am a naran. Narans are the intelligent species of Zago. I hope that was scientific enough for you, Perry the human.”
“Yes, Halera the naran, it was perfect,” Perry smiled.
Halera smiled back and then crawled down the tunnel again. After a short while, they reached a junction that went downward. He hoped that wherever this led, it would take them to a viable exit where they could try and join back up with Blake and Michelle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Blake and Michelle arrived at a military headquarters on the opposite side of the city from where the Kursas ship had landed. Blake had wanted to take out his scanner to check on Perry, but he was hesitant to do so under the watchful eye of the military. He was concerned that Perry had not tried to make contact yet, but figured he might not have had the chance. The vehicle that carried them approached a garage door which opened of its own accord to admit them, and then closed behind them. When they stopped, Retinda and Darvin led them out of the vehicle and through a complex of short, brightly-lit hallways until they arrived at a room that Blake was easily able to deduce contained all of the information they had about the old Kursas ship, which Retinda quickly confirmed.
Pictures of the cargo holds littered the walls along with a well-rendered map showing the layout of the ship. Lists next to the pictures detailed every item they had cataloged from the holds either by name or description. Blake was impressed.
“If you believe you can find any clues as to what might have happened to that forswight thing,” Retinda said, “I welcome you to find it. Honestly, I hope you do. Our people have been over this information almost non-stop since the newer Kursas ship arrived, and we’re at a dead end.”
“Do you know where it was originally?” Blake asked.
“Here,” Retinda said, pointing to a series of pictures of one particular hold. She indicated a square crate, metallic in appearance, but almost identical to every other container in the picture. “We believe this container has the forswight in it because every one of these crates had different symbols that we guessed were probably numbers, which we just used to catalog them. You can see the number there.”
Retinda handed Blake a magnifier, and he looked at the location she designated. As she said, there were a couple of symbols in that area of the crate.
“And every crate had those symbols in the same place?” Blake asked.
“And all of them different,” Retinda said. “We aren’t sure what the symbols mean, so we just classified everything by hold and then made our own system using the characters.”
“Very nice,” Blake said taking a small, flat device with a navigational key and a screen to allow him to browse between the pages of the hold manifest. Under the hold that Retinda designated, he found the pages organized by symbol, and other than the Kursas symbols, everything else was perfectly readable to him.
“What is the determination of your people on the nature of the items in that hold?” Blake asked. “Did it differ in some way from the others?”
“Oh yes,” Retinda said. “The ship had four holds. The other three contained standard supplies like food, clothing, and spare parts. This one was the largest, and it had a variety of technological items. This hold was also the only one that the Kursas out there were interested in.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Blake said. “I told them we teleported down from our own ship, and they definitely wanted to keep us alive so that our ship would return for them to steal it. Do you know how long the crashed ship has been out there?”
“Well, it was completely buried, but not sealed,” Retinda explained. “We don’t know much about the Kursas physiology, but we made some guesses based on the bodies we did recover and the nature of the ground and plant life around the site which is probably seventy or eighty years.”
“Only that long?” Blake asked rhetorically. “I’d wager they didn’t make the level of advancement we saw in that newer ship on their own. This only confirms my hypothesis of their being technology thieves. They seek out races who are more advanced than they are and then find a way to implement their technology. Whatever this thing is they want, especially if they haven’t duplicated it or found another in seventy or eighty years, I doubt we’ll want to give it to them.”
“We would do anything to save our people,” Retinda said. “They only came here because we tripped some kind of alarm in their ship, but they said once they get what they want, they’ll leave. We have nothing they want.”
“You have a planet,” Blake said, “and a population unable to stand against them. How long do you think that will go unnoticed?”
“So what are we going to do then?” Michelle asked.
“Well, we have to find this thing, apparently,” Blake said. “You’d think they would just do that themselves.”
“They found their ship quickly enough,” Retinda said.
“But they had to have you return their cargo, right?” Blake asked.
“Yes, they did,” Retinda confirmed. “How is that relevant?”
“Not sure yet,” Blake said. “Tell me about the crates. What are they made of?”
“We have no idea,” Retinda said. “The metal is light but unyielding. It isn’t like anything we have on Zago.”
“That’s useful,” Blake said.
“How?” Michelle asked.
“That depends on whether Retinda still happens to ha
ve one of those crates around here somewhere,” Blake said, looking hopefully at Retinda. “Tell me you do.”
“Well, yes,” Retinda shrugged. “The only things that the Kursas wanted back were the items in the one hold. They didn’t care about everything else, so we still have the crates from the other holds in storage here, primarily to study their metal.”
“Perfect,” Blake said. “Take me to them.”
“Follow me,” Retinda said, and she led them out of the room down the maze of hallways again. It was a brisk walk, but Blake and Michelle kept the pace very easily.
“What are you going to do?” Michelle asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
“There is always something to do,” Blake said, “but we have to take everything a step at a time before we can figure out what that is. It is my sincere hope that this crate is made of an element so unique that it does not exist on Zago, which means that I may be able to use my scanner to find another instance of it. We can ignore the Kursas ship and this facility, and my scanner doesn’t have an unlimited range, but it is unlikely that whoever took that item went very far with it.”
“Why wouldn’t the Kursas do that?” Retinda asked.
“Who says they didn’t?” Blake asked. “In fact, we’ll probably just come to the same conclusion they did, but hopefully, we’ll have a little more information to go on. Either way, if we hope to sort this out, we’d best hurry.”
“Here we are,” Retinda said as they arrived at a pair of large doors. A light above the door flashed before it turned green, and the doors opened for them.
Beyond the doors was a massive room which held a fleet of those bullet vehicles along with a large number of the crates with Kursas symbology. Blake walked to one of the containers and took out his scanner. He set it to read its molecular structure to determine its makeup, and after about thirty seconds, it identified the material as Kavamantite, a metal known on many worlds for its strength and lightweight nature. It tended to be somewhat rare on those worlds, so Blake was surprised it was being used for something as pedestrian as crates.
“If the Kursas find it themselves, won’t they just leave?” Michelle asked.
“I find it far more likely that the Kursas feel this device is important enough that they will tread lightly on this planet to get it back undamaged,” Blake said.
“So once they get it back, our usefulness runs out,” Retinda said.
“That would seem very probable,” Blake said. “In fact, it is possible they needed to know what material the crates were made from before they could scan for it. Once they had the originals, that gave them the same thing it gives us.”
“Something to look for,” Michelle said.
“They’ve had those crates for days, though,” Retinda said, “It would stand to reason that if they were going to do it, they would have done so already.”
“Maybe,” Blake said. “It is also possible that it took them longer to scan for it. They have more powerful equipment than I do, but scanning a large area for a single element takes time, and how much time depends on the strength of the equipment. They might be no closer than we are.”
“But we have crates here still,” Retinda said, worry coming through her voice.
“How much do you think they believed your story over returning everything?” Blake asked.
Suddenly, the underground bunker shook violently from a bombardment on the surface.
“I think they’ve come to verify the story,” Michelle said.
“Well, we need to start looking for their item anyway,” Blake said. “Hopefully, we have enough information and have a head start. Back door?”
Retinda pointed to an exit opposite the way they had come in, and she, Blake, Michelle, and Darvin all ran for it as another explosion caused the roof to crumble again raining debris down upon them. They exited the hold just as another explosion blasted open the door at the far end. A voice barked orders in the strange, Kursas language loud enough to sound through the closed door, but they did not wait to see if the Kursas would discover them.
Retinda lead them down a dimly lit utility hall decorated with pipes and wires. The solid, concrete-like nature of the walls would cause their voices to carry well since their footfalls were echoing well enough.
Retinda finally came to a ladder that led down below the building and stopped.
“This may not be the most pleasant of options,” Retinda said, “but as we don’t know the situation on the surface, this was made large enough to be an emergency escape tunnel.”
Retinda opened the floor access panel, and a smell wafted up to them. Michelle wrinkled her nose in disgust. “We’re not going to walk in that, are we?” she asked.
“The sewage runs in pipes down there, but the pipes are old, so I would certainly not recommend eating off the floor,” Retinda explained. “There are also no lights down there, so you’ll have to stay close.”
“Let’s go,” Blake said. “As soon as the Kursas are done with your place, they will most certainly be heading to wherever that cargo container finally ended up.”
Retinda nodded and led the way down. Darvin signaled for Blake and Michelle to go next before he climbed down behind them and sealed the door. As promised, the tunnel was very dark, and the walls were close. Retinda turned on a light showing then just how cramped it really was.
The walls were made of pipes, but there was a walkway between them just large enough for a person to move. As also promised, the pipes were not altogether sealed, and so they leaked their contents onto the floor creating a thin layer of liquid they would be walking through.
“Follow me,” Retinda whispered, her voice echoing in the tight corridor. Pointing the light down into the darkness, she led them away from the action and into the unknown mystery of the sewer tunnel beneath the city.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Perry and Halera crawled through the maintenance shafts in the Kursas ship, moving downward where possible until Perry finally felt like they were probably close enough to the ground to risk finding a way out. This would be particularly dangerous since any exit from the ship would not be found within these maintenance hatches. Part of him hoped it would be, but within him, he knew that access to the outside of a spacecraft would require an airlock in most cases, and it would not be practical to place a full airlock inside a maintenance tube.
He and Halera had not spoken to each other besides what needed to be said to move through the tunnels. He found her voice and manner to be very pleasant despite what she had been through, and he could see through the fear, worry, and filth that she was quite beautiful. When she spoke to him, she always smiled slightly which set him at ease through their stressful journey.
At their final stop, he was fearful of opening the door, not knowing what might be waiting for them. None of the maintenance hatches had any kind of window or peephole built into them, so opening one would be taking a huge chance. Yet, there seemed to be no choice in the matter. He had to figure out his part in this mission having been separated from Blake and Michelle.
“I feel like we’re at the bottom of the ship,” Perry said softly, “or close enough to it.”
“As do I,” Halera said. “I can see the next move is clear to you, but I have to confess that I am wary of it.”
“We can’t stay here,” Perry said.
“I know,” Halera said. “I am with you, Perry.”
Perry took a deep breath and slowly opened the maintenance hatch. It opened into a quiet, dim-lit corridor with dark openings along its walls. The air had a faint musty smell to it, so he crawled out of the maintenance hatch and looked in one of the holes. Behind him, Halera watched him closely.
Before he got very close to the dark opening, the huge head of one of the red panda-like Kursas mounts rose up to meet him. He took a reflexive step backward only to hear breathing behind him as well. He turned to find another one looking out of the opening on the other side of the room. Looking down the room, black noses peeped out o
f each hole in response to the sudden, albeit very quiet, disturbance.
“Should we move on?” Halera whispered.
“No,” Perry whispered back, “this is good. They’ve got to have these things close to an airlock or something to get them outside. Let’s go.”
He heard a large foot step on the floor next to him and a cold, wet nose nudged his shoulder. We patted the side of the poor creature’s face as Halera closed the hatch behind her.
Softly, they walked through what could only be the on-board stables for the Kursas’ impossibly large versions of red pandas. Perry figured either these things came from earth at some point and were genetically altered to be big, or the universe just happened to like the red panda so much that it made a second one somewhere else.
They reached the end of the stables and as with the maintenance hatches, there was no window to let them know if they were in the right place, or if there might be a contingency of Kursas standing right there. He took hold of the door handle and glanced at Halera as if to ask if she were ready. She gave him a nod, so he turned the handle and opened the door.
Before he could think, a scaly hand pulled him out of the room and tossed him against a wall where shackles emerged, immediately trapping him. He had heard Halera scream behind him and hoped she had escaped, but before he could say anything, she was shackled to a panel next to him.
She looked at him with tears in her eyes, and he mouthed that he was sorry. She nodded her head in response.
“I don’t know how you escaped your cell,” Pyrhinia said as she walked into the open area of what was likely the airlock they were looking for. The wall that held them was close to a cabinet of what looked like bridles used to control the mounts, and Perry supposed that this wall was usually used as a table to hold the miscellaneous items needed to prepare themselves and the mounts for travel on the worlds where they landed. Pyrhinia continued, “but I find it clear at this point that you are working with the people of Zago to take the things which rightfully belong to us.”
The Kursas Page 6
