The Mard Token swelled, its intake orifices fluttering wide as it inhaled deep gulps of the frigid methane air. A body gesture Taach`Rel had learned to recognize as euphoria. “This Token joyously anticipates that reclamation. You shall accompany this Token. You will be delighted by the wondrous flavors of Cush and Jiltanna.”
Taach`Rel smiled at the octopod. “I joyously anticipate that tasting.”
The Mard Token was delightfully gregarious, possessing a quirky sense of humor Taach`Rel found amusing and infectious. He’d become most fond of the octopod, considering it not just an ally but a friend as well.
A few months before, the Mard Token―bringing atmospheric chillers and enough supplies for a three-year journey―had joined Taach`Rel aboard Krevjak. The two of them had worked well together as they solidified the new alliance. Early on, during the initial meetings, there’d been tense moments. Even though Ryche-Angst were capable of throat-pouch generated vocal sounds suitable for audio communication, they preferred taste dialogue. Taach`Rel had learned that Ryche-Angst tentacle suckers had a phenomenal acuity, able to “read” complex ideas, even feel emotions, by tasting secretions of the “talker.” This allowed a deeper, far more comprehensive exchange of thoughts than mere spoken words. During deep philosophical conversations, Taach`Rel had seen up to five of the Mard Token’s eight tentacles intertwined with another Ryche-Angst.
However, as the Warlord knew right from the start, this only worked between two Ryche-Angst. Out of political courtesy, Taach`Rel had endured the nauseating tastings without complaint, even though Ryche-Angst sucker secretions were toxic and he’d suffered severe stomach cramps as a result. Once the Mard Token recognized Seer saliva was uninformative, communication between them shifted to audio speech alone. For this Taach`Rel was extremely thankful.
A secondary Seer entered the chamber, bringing news. “A reconnaissance pod in the Garn Sector has been captured by an unknown force. Grid system is Cyr-Tar-Vole. Threat impact unknown. The Amber Spar Legion is responding.”
The Mard Token belched long and loud, expressing its concern. Tentacles curled up tight. “Will this disrupt our alliance?”
“No,” Taach`Rel answered confidently. “This will not disrupt our alliance. Whatever threat lies in the Garn Sector, it should have no impact on our grand strategy.”
Argo
Sinja gave Mercer a cold stare as he strolled onto the bridge.
He held up the detonator and waggled it in her direction, making sure she saw it, before plopping down in a chair. He smiled at Sinja. Not a nice, friendly smile, either. Oh no, it was the twisted smile of a man who held power over someone to do with as he pleased. She had seen it many times, on the faces of prison guards before they raped her.
Arrogant prick, Sinja thought. Oh, how she longed to wipe that smile off Mercer’s smug face. But as long as he held the detonator, she had to play nice. She smiled back at him in return.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” Mercer said. “I know you’re not real happy about my theft of that alien escape pod, forcing you to go along with it and all that.”
Sinja laughed. “Really . . . ya think?”
“How ’bout I make it up to you?”
Sinja’s laugh turned into an open-mouthed stare. “Huh?”
“I have an offer to make, one I think you’ll like.”
Sinja eyed him suspiciously, wondering what Mercer was up to now. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Dupree and I take that alien pod while you and Datch keep this ship. A straight swap. You get our shares of Argo’s cargo in exchange for both of your claims to the pod. Sound good?”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“Been talking it over with Dupree, and we think we can transport the pod with Argo’s shuttle. Won’t fit through the shuttle’s airlock, but we can easily mount it on top. Did some test runs through the flight simulator and it should work. Just need to add some support struts and boost the shield emitters. The shuttle is Albatross-class, decent hyperdrive with enough range to get us to the Gorki system. Shuttle mods should only take us a few days. After they’re done, Argo will drop from hyper so we can depart, taking the pod with us. Once we’re on our merry way, you and Datch continue as originally planned. You’re happy. I’m happy. Everyone gets what they want.”
Sinja mulled it over. Mercer’s offer had a certain irresistible appeal to it. Not only would she rid herself of everything alien, she and Datch would get a double-share from this heist. They didn’t need Mercer’s particular talents anymore. Dupree’s either. Yet as the old adage went, when something sounded too good to be true, it probably wasn’t. “Given you just blackmailed me, how can I ever trust you again?”
“I’ll give you the detonator before we get on the shuttle,” Mercer replied.
His fast response told Sinja he’d thought this deal through. “What makes you think I won’t kill you then and there?”
Mercer shrugged. “To make this deal work, we have to trust one other at some point. And . . . I know you want that alien pod off this ship. If you kill me, you’re stuck with it.”
Excellent point, Sinja admitted. The sooner that pod left Argo, the happier she’d be.
“I have one condition,” she said. “You give me the detonator and remove the bomb you put down in the hyper controls, then you can leave. Not a minute before.”
“Agreed. Do we have a deal?”
Sinja nodded. “Yes, we do.”
Archangel Nomad
All weapons were fully energized and ready to fire as the police corvette dropped from hyper. The Cirtus Beta defense perimeter was 640,000 kilometers ahead.
Captain Hoth watched the main bridge monitor as the sleek, dart-shaped, 352-meter-long Archangel Nomad sped closer. Small by comparison to Imperium warships, the policeship was built for speed, with half its bulk comprised of a long-range hyperdrive and powerful ion-thrust engines for sublight travel. Crew accommodations for the forty-six enforcers aboard were sparse. Even the bridge was cramped, a box-like compartment just five meters across, with a command chair for Hoth, a security station where Pendergan sat, an armored housing for Gulfstream―the shipboard AI―and little else.
On the main monitor, Archangel Nomad appeared as a green dagger on a schematic representation of the Cirtus Beta system, slowly moving toward the dotted orange arc that identified the defense perimeter around it. Protecting the corporate assets in-system were 32 CA-10 guardian satellites, all hyperlinked, equipped with enough firepower to prevent pirate raiders from taking what belonged to others.
Originally, a silent alarm from the Cirtus Beta system had given Hoth an excuse to rush here for a surprise inspection. Even though the alarm was soon cancelled, boredom from long weeks of dull patrol and inaction had compelled him to continue. Along the way he’d run some training drills to keep the crew busy. Then, when a priority alert went out, reporting an alien spacecraft had crossed the defense perimeter, Hoth’s decision to vector here at max velocity looked like genius. More dumb luck than brains, but he’d take whatever status boost it gave him back at corporate HQ.
“We’re being hit by multiple tach scans,” Pendergan reported.
Seconds later, a metallic voice burst from the bridge speakers. “Warning. You have entered licensed space of the Idex Mineral Consortium. Transmit valid entry code now or vacate this―”
Pendergan muted the blaring message while Gulfstream sent a valid code followed by an encrypted authorization command, thereby establishing a secure data link with the guardians. Once priority-level access was obtained, telemetry data began flowing in via the hyperspace screech.
The first thing Hoth wanted to see was the alien spacecraft.
“Images are coming through now,” Pendergan stated. “I’m transferring a video feed recorded by one of the guard sats to the big screen.”
The main monitor flickered, then Hoth saw a starscape appear. He peered close but saw nothing other than stars and empty space. “Where is it?”
“Magnifying.” Pendergan zoomed the magnification a hundredfold, shook his head at the results, then bumped it up some more.
Now Hoth saw a faint, blackish blob against a background of deep space. The view was blurry due to the distortive effects of the snare field wrapped around the alien object, but processing filters soon cleaned up the image, and suddenly it became crystal clear. Hoth shivered as he stared at the egg-shaped spacecraft. A red indicator at the bottom right told him the magnification was 250x. If not for enhanced optics, the object would be invisible to a human eye against the starscape behind it. “Gulfstream, can you identify it?”
“Negative,” the AI chirped. “No conformity to any known ship type. The probability of alien origin exceeds ninety-seven percent.”
Hoth felt goosebumps rise up on the back of his neck. An alien encounter was something to be feared. He’d seen the old videos. Everyone had. Videos of the first encounters with alien beings, the events recorded by intrepid explorers for posterity in gruesome high-resolution detail. The K’klacken encounter was particularly disturbing, the images forever burned into Hoth’s mind. Sickening images that, once seen, could never be forgotten.
The encounter took place at Scoplex Omega, a red dwarf 642 light years from Earth. The exploration ship SFS Hermes detected EM emissions and other signs of civilization on the fifth planet and went in for a closer look. Hermes landed twenty kilometers out from what was perceived as a fairly large city. As the five-person exploration team emerged from the ship, over a ridgeline and down the slope came creatures that resembled giant, multi-limbed, red-shelled crabs. Their bodies were squat and powerfully built, with two massive claws tucked in tight. Between the claws was a large, protruding beaked mouth lined with serrated edges. Four short appendages best described as clawed grippers hung below it. No eyes or ears were visible, but burnt-orange sensory stalks sprouted above the mouth, waving back and forth as if blown by a breeze. The largest K’klacken was three meters wide and must have weighed half a tonne, probably more.
Hoth grimaced, recalling what happened next. A woman from the exploration team walked toward the creatures, holding out a hand in greeting. Hoth thought she was a biologist, maybe not, but he remembered she was incredibly brave. The largest K’klacken came toward her with swift, clockwork strides, its sensory stalks flapping intensely. These stopped abruptly as the woman spoke, “Greetings. I am―”
In a blur of motion one of those massive claws reached out, slicing the woman in two just above her waist. The other four members of the exploration team turned and ran. They never reached their ship. Hoth could still hear their harrowing screams as they were snipped and hacked apart by K’klacken claws. Videocams on Hermes panned over the aftermath, showing dismembered limbs and bloody corpses strewn across a grassy field. K’klacken picked through the remains.
The Hermes was blown apart while making an emergency liftoff from the planet, struck by high-velocity kinetic rounds fired from a camouflaged ground battery.
Thinking it all must have been a terrible mistake―that creatures smart enough to build starships and colonize planets couldn’t possibly be so overtly hostile―Ezod Bolinger, the presiding chancellor of the Sol Federation, sent a team of ambassadors to Scoplex Omega, four men and five women, all waving white flags symbolic of peace as they emerged from their unarmed diplomatic courier ship. They promptly met the same bloody fate. Those videos were even worse.
Chancellor Bolinger, resolved to have peace above all else, sent another team of ambassadors to meet with the K’klacken. They, too, were killed, and when a third team was assigned the diplomatic task, Bolinger met serious resistance, one bold ambassador telling the chancellor she’d only go if Bolinger went too. He didn’t, and neither did she, resigning her post publicly in protest, but twenty-eight others bravely gave their lives for pacifist ideals.
And then came Amson, after which all attempts for a peaceful resolution with the K’klacken ceased.
Amson was a thriving Earthlike world, proud of its temperate climes and scenic beauty. Three of its four continents had abundant, sprawling forests and fertile river valleys. In between were shallow, nontidal oceans that―as the settlers quickly discovered―teemed with diverse, abundant, and very delicious seafood. Amson grew fast, becoming rich on the export of shellfish and goldfin fillets from its floating cities, exquisite burl wood grown in forest plantations, and a chocolate variant from a cacao tree hybrid that thrived on amino nitrates found in the black, fertile soil, prized chocolate that was soon in high demand throughout the Inner Worlds.
Hoth’s ancestors were among the first colonists, migrating on a one-way journey to Amson on an overcrowded spin-can interstellar transport that took twenty-two years to arrive. As part of their generous enticement package that lured in new settlers, they received a thousand acres of prime forest along the Choctaw River and enough government credits to start a burl wood plantation. Hoth’s forebears had done well, their timber exports making them one of the wealthiest families there when the K’klacken attacked.
Amson’s limited orbital defenses, designed to blow up incoming asteroids before planetary impact, were obliterated in the first few hours of fighting. The K’klacken then put more than two hundred warships into close orbit and began pounding the planet below.
K’klacken ships were big, bulky things, shaped a lot the K’klacken themselves. Huge mass drivers propelled two-tonne tungsten pellets at high speeds, targeting both of Amson’s starports and the space elevator complex at Narmox with the first salvo. The planet had no significant military targets, so harbors, power plants, airports, and transport centers were hit next. The cities followed, the two-tonne projectiles plunging through the atmosphere in seconds to strike one after another, exploding with cataclysmic force. Klisterton, the capital, was demolished, its skytowers, office buildings, and the gleaming new government center smashed and broken, reduced to crumbling debris. Dust and columns of gray-black smoke rose into the air.
As if that wasn’t enough, the K’klacken launched a planetary invasion. It was estimated that 2,140 heavily armored assault craft took part in the initial landings, with hundreds more in the follow-up waves. K’klacken troops in red-clad combat suits with large-bore weaponry shot everything that moved―men, women, children, livestock, pets, birds flying overhead, everything. Whether or not their target fought, tried to surrender, or ran, the K’klacken killed it. They swept across Amson in eleven days, conquering the planet.
Only a handful of the 635 million inhabitants escaped. Hoth’s fourteenth great-grandfather was one of them.
So began the First Interstellar War, a far-flung conflict that lasted forty-seven years, later known more infamously as the Red War.
“Uhm, the alien spacecraft is gone.” Pendergan swung around in his chair, giving Hoth a confused look. “According to the data records, the guardians released the object to Argo, an ore hauler leased by the Idex Consortium.”
“What?” Hoth didn’t believe it. Must be corrupted data. “An ore hauler? They don’t carry command-level codes.”
“Argo used command-level codes,” Pendergan insisted. “According to the data, they used a valid access code, valid input sequence, even a valid override authorization command with a valid encryption key. Everything was valid. The guardians had no choice but to release it.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” Hoth argued.
Pendergan nodded agreement. “I know. Why would a hauler even want an alien spacecraft to begin with?”
“I’m more concerned with how they overrode the guardians. Where’s that hauler now?”
Pendergan’s fingers danced across his security console as he queried the guardians. “After Argo snared the alien spacecraft aboard, it exited the defense perimeter and went hyper.”
“Contact Zeres Able. Find out what they know about what went on here. I want full specs on the hauler, its destination, crew, cargo manifest, everything.” Hoth’s instincts told him he was missing something, he
just wasn’t sure what. “Gulfstream, analyze the command codes and encryption key used by Argo to override the guardians. Look for anything suspicious: bore worms, Trojan malware, corruptors, anything out of the ordinary.”
“Analyzing,” Gulfstream replied.
“No response from the platform,” Pendergan reported a minute later. “All comm channels from Zeres Able are silent, but their IFF transponder is still transmitting. We’re also receiving routine nav telemetry from them, but nothing else.”
Hoth sank back in his chair, puzzled. The more they learned about what happened here, the more confusing the situation became. “Okay, let’s review the facts, shall we. First, an alien spacecraft of unknown origin enters the system, crosses the defense perimeter and gets snared by the guardians, then in a really bizarre twist it’s taken by a hauler with command-level codes. Plus we have a mining platform gone silent. Anyone care to venture a guess as to what’s going on?”
Pendergan took a stab at it. “Maybe more than one alien ship is involved. Maybe another ship slipped across the perimeter while the guardians were busy snaring their friend. Suppose aliens snuck onto Zeres Able, killed everyone and took the hauler, using it to rescue their friend trapped by the guardians as they left. That would explain why the platform is silent.”
Hoth gave him a sour look. “I was hoping for a theory in which everyone didn’t die.” If Pendergan was right, they needed to know. “Gulfstream, scan the platform, max intensity.”
The policeship’s tachyon scanners illuminated the platform for an entire five seconds, more than enough to identify everything down to the smallest nut and bolt. Gulfstream gave a report of relevant highlights. “Zeres Able is intact with minimal damage. 198 humans are aboard, the entire crew, their vital signs indicating average to excellent health. I am unable to interface with the platform AI, but it appears functional. I assume the platform’s communication links were disabled to prevent calls for assistance. Logic infers this was done by whoever took the alien spacecraft.”
The Sphere Imperium: Book Two of the Intentional Contact Trilogy Page 10
