Dark Space

by Stephen A. Fender

  “What exactly is that thing you’re doing?” Shawn asked, watching Uudon fidget with a palm-sized device he was pointing at the droid.

  “I’m testing a new calibration I’ve inputted into this molecular scanner, Commander,” he said without giving Shawn a glance. “It should increase the effectiveness of the device.”

  “To what end?”

  Uudon stopped fumbling with the scanner long enough to let out a sigh of frustration, then went back to twisting knobs. “Do you recall, Commander, that I said that I knew why the Meltranians were invading our space?”

  Shawn nodded. “Yeah. You said something about them wanting to recover space they might have once occupied. Which, by the way, seems a little farfetched if you ask me.”

  “All current evidence to the contrary, Commander, you’ll forgive me if I find your lack of confidence in my assessment both emotive and unjustified. However, having said that, I believe your initial supposition is essentially correct. They are here to reclaim what was theirs, and, if my further hypotheses are correct, it will come at a very high price for the current inhabitants.”

  “You mean us,” Melissa asked from the bedside.

  “Yes, Agent Graves. All of us.”

  “Why?” Shawn asked.

  Uudon put the scanner down and retrieved another small device. “The Meltranian energy weapons—the ones called isotonic cannons—have repeatedly been shown to sap all electrical energy from anything it impacts with. This includes synthetic power from starships as well as everything organically generated. In the short recorded history of the weapon’s use, there has been nothing to dispute that. I believe there is a purpose to that.”

  “It’s called wanton destruction, Doctor,” Shawn quipped. “That not enough reason for you?”

  Uudon chuckled mockingly. “But there’s no purpose to that theory, Commander. As an example, humanity alone has more than enough combined firepower to get the same results with far more efficiency. An isotonic cannon makes little sense as a weapon of mass destruction. It’s too power-prohibitive to make it a viable platform for sustained warfare.”

  “They’ve put it to pretty good use as a platform, Doctor,” Melissa countered. “Tens of thousands have died that we know of, perhaps millions more.”

  Uudon put the small device down. “Yes … they have. But have you ever stopped to ask why … really asked yourself why they died?”

  Melissa stood up to stand near Shawn. “You mean how they died?”

  Uudon gazed at Melissa. “I can see which of you was the better student in school.”

  “Okay, then. How?” Shawn asked as he folded his arms together.

  Uudon looked to Melissa expectantly. “Agent Graves?”

  “Like you said before, the weapon … the device, it draws out electrical signals. Without them, the body ceases to function.”

  “It draws out more than that. It draws out heat as well,” Uudon added.

  “Like a heat exchanger,” Shawn nodded. “But that’s no different than standard refrigeration devices. Why would the Meltranians want to freeze anybody … or anything?”

  The doctor smiled. “I don’t think they want to.”

  Shawn looked at him quizzically, wondering what he was getting at, but it was Melissa who took the bait.

  “You think it’s … it’s some sort of byproduct?”

  Uudon bowed his head. “I do. You see, I have a theory that the Meltranians prosper off these impulses … both electrical and radiated. Based on my research, it’s very likely how the communication repeaters work. There’s no reason to think that any other forms of their technology would be different.”

  “So they use the energy generated by other life-forms to power their equipment?” Shawn asked in disbelief.

  Uudon shrugged. “They may well use it sustain their very existence. We have no definitive way of knowing; not without further research.”

  “I’ve seen these things firsthand, Doctor,” Shawn said, recalling the towering alien he and Colonel Tausan had once battled. He shivered internally as he remembered the fang-lined mouth, and the four powerful arms that ended in razor-sharp claws—claws that would have torn him to pieces if not for the fact that Tausan had decapitated their foe before it’d had a chance to strike. “If they eat energy for a living, I didn’t get any sense for it.”

  “There are a great many unknowns in the universe, Commander. Not all of it can be observed from a casual encounter with a small percentage of it.”

  “You make it sound like I wanted to have a beer with the thing. It nearly killed me—and it succeeded in doing so to a good Marine. There’s nothing casual about that.” Before Shawn could further argue his point, Melissa cut in.

  “But if that’s true,” she began, “then as long as there are planets within their reach, the Meltranians could keep expanding their empire indefinitely.”

  “It’s possible,” Uudon said, as if the thought had already crossed his mind. “There’s a great deal we don’t know about their home space, let alone their culture.”

  “Like you said, the universe is a pretty big place, Doc,” Shawn agreed. “So why now? I mean, if they have the ability to do this, we should have heard about it long before now. And why did they lose their hold on this part of the galaxy in the first place? It seems with a weapon like that, they’d be unstoppable.”

  Uudon looked at Shawn approvingly. “All very valid points, Commander. Why they are invading now … it’s impossible to say. As for why they lost the portion of their Empire that we now know as Beta Sector …” His words trailed off as he contemplated the weight of the question. “If you can answer that, Commander Kestrel, you may also discover how to win this war.”

  Before Shawn had a moment to ponder the statement, the double door to their stateroom ground open to admit Major Fralok.

  “We are nearing the Hellnastor system,” the voice translator echoed. “Your presence on the bridge has been requested.”

  Getting a nod from Melissa, Shawn turned back to Uudon. “Is that thing turned off?” he asked as he nodded toward M-9.

  “Yes, of course it is. I wouldn’t be able to work on it otherwise.”

  “Good. Keep it that way. We need to get to the bridge, and your friend is staying here.”

  “Reverence does not die with mortals, nor does it perish whether they live or die.”

  -Sophocles

  Ancient Old Earth Playwright

  496 BCE

  Chapter 16

  Entering the bridge, Shawn was greeted by the vision of an enormous gas giant planet spinning just beyond the bow of the warship. The high velocity winds of the upper atmosphere were spinning bands of blue and orange gases at tremendous speeds, creating and destroying vortexes large enough to swallow whole moons. Brilliant flashes of light sparkled beneath the clouds as lightning storms a hundred miles wide ignited in fury.

  “Tevis,” Captain Ralath said from beside Shawn as he, too, appeared to marvel in the beauty. “Not much in the way of raw materials or solar importance, yet it is still called the ‘Great Gem’ of this sector.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Strange, is it not, Commander?” Ralath said while watching a particularly nasty web of lightning spread across the equator.

  “What’s that?”

  “That the two of us, from such vastly different cultures, can appreciate the same spectacle of beauty with reverence.”

  Shawn nodded slowly. “It is that.”

  “Tell me something, Commander … one warrior to another. Do you think peace will ever truly exist between our two people?”

  Shawn looked around the room, trying to grasp how alien everything was, from the instruments to the Kafaran officers manning them. However, the more he gazed, the more it surprised him how “normal” it was all beginning to look. “I don’t know. But one thing is for certain—war between our people shouldn’t be an option.”

  “Because the Kafarans would win?” Ralath said while curling his lips.
Shawn recognized it as the best Kafaran approximation of a smile. He returned the gesture.

  “It doesn’t matter who would win, Captain. No one is going to come out of it clean. In fact, I fear that another war would be even more costly than the last.”

  Ralath grunted as he nodded, then turned back to stare at Tevis. “Total annihilation?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Both our people, at one time or another, have shown a propensity toward it. I’d put good credits on it.”

  “Not an acceptable form of payment in the Kafaran Empire,” he said stoically, then looked back down to Shawn. “As you humans say, you may find that check hard to cash.”

  Shawn smiled broadly, which Ralath mirrored. “Is my translation in error?” the Kafaran asked.

  “No,” Shawn laughed. “I got that one loud and clear.”

  There was a moment of silence before Shawn spoke up. “I thought you said this system was crawling with Meltranians?”

  “I was not in error.” The captain then nodded to the planet Tevis beyond. “In fact, there are several Meltranian warships on the far side of the planet right now.”

  Shawn gazed at the beautiful world with newfound reverence. “So why is it that we haven’t been blown to bits yet?”

  “Fear not, Commander,” Ralath said with an air of assuredness. “I have traveled these paths before. It is because of that very reason that this ship was chosen for this mission.”

  Shawn gave him a skeptical look. “Don’t tell me you’ve found a way to shield yourself from their sensors?”

  “Not in so many words, Commander. The size of the ship, in conjunction with the storms of Tevis below, block our immediate detection. For the moment, the Meltranians will only distinguish us when we are in a direct line of sight. My navigator is currently making sure that does not happen.”

  “And how long will this moment of yours last?”

  “Once our orbit takes us on the far side of the planet we will be detected from any ship within several hundred thousand units—depending on which vessels are scanning this area at that moment.”

  “Time?”

  “About sixty-five of your minutes. You have that long to formulate a plan.”

  Turning to face Melissa and Doctor Uudon, Shawn was at a loss as to how to proceed. “Any ideas?” he asked, inclining his head back toward the planet Tevis.

  Melissa sighed heavily. “This is where Santorum’s signal was sent, so we need to figure out something.”

  Uudon harrumphed in frustration. “It’s a wonder you two ever survived this long in space.”

  Shawn glared over Melissa’s shoulder at the doctor. “Now’s not the time, Doctor.”

  But Uudon, unfazed, continued, “If the signal was sent in this direction, then there must be either a repeater or a processing station nearby. That should be our goal.”

  “We know that,” Shawn snapped. “But where? And how do we get close enough to it? Has that big brain of yours figured out those little problems yet?”

  Before Uudon could answer, Melissa turned to Captain Ralath. “You said this was once a Kafaran system.”

  Ralath nodded his large head. “It was.”

  “Did your people ever come across anything … alien? By that I mean, did you ever come across anything you believed was Meltranian in origin?”

  Ralath regarded her with curiosity. “Such as?”

  “Meteorite fragments? Crystalline structures? Anything not naturally occurring in this system?”

  Ralath chuckled. “I believe you will find that archeology and geology are not Kafaran’s stronger sciences.” When he saw that his words had deflated her, he attempted be more precise. “I’m afraid I know of nothing foreign in this system, beyond the presence of those accursed Meltranians scurrying about out there.”

  “How many of them are out there?” Shawn asked.

  Ralath waved them over to a holographic table at the back of the room. Pressing one of the controls, a dimensional image of the entire system appeared and hovered over the surface. A moment later a series of red spheres began to pulsate. “These are the locations of the enemy vessels.”

  Just as Ralath had indicated earlier, two were on the far side of Tevis. One was near the fifth planet in the system, with three more near the central star.

  “Those three there?” Melissa asked, pointing to the orbs nearest the star.

  “Collectors, I would imagine,” Ralath nodded. “They’re too far away for an accurate scan, but I’ve seen this kind of behavior from them before.”

  “They can survive that close to a stellar mass?” Uudon asked in surprise. “Incredible.”

  Ralath nodded. “For short periods of time. We believe they harness the emitted radiation directly into the hulls of their vessels, as their isotonic cannons would be useless against the star’s surface.”

  “Plausible,” Uudon acknowledged.

  “What about this one here?” Shawn asked, pointing to the one nearest the fifth planet.

  Ralath brought up an expanded diagram of the single vessel. “A patrol vessel. Roughly equivalent in firepower to this ship.” As Ralath was reading over the data, another blip appeared just behind the red one, its green glow pulsing slowly.

  “What’s that?” Shawn asked.

  His curiosity piqued, Ralath tried to get access more data on the object. “I do not know, Commander. It does not conform to known Meltranian designs.”

  “Can you boost the range of your sensors?”

  “No,” Ralath said, his fingers a blur of motion over a nearby keypad. “To do so would almost certainly expose our presence.”

  “How are you getting readings now?” Melissa asked.

  “As you will recall, this system was once in the possession of the Kafarans. Even months after our withdrawal, the Meltranians have yet to remove all our sensor platforms from the system. It seems the Meltranians can’t detect anything that does not emanate power readings. Currently, their output is so low it could easily be mistaken for background radiation.”

  “You’re using them to scan the interior of the system.” Shawn nodded in approval.

  “Yes. Normally they would be used to detect outside threats entering the system. However, my technicians have accessed them remotely and switched them into a passive mode. I’ve directed our ship’s sensor beams at one of those platforms, and the platform is targeting the unknown object. But, as I said, since we are using them at extreme range and at their lowest settings, the readings we are getting back are not as detailed as I would prefer.”

  “And you still can’t tell what it is?” Shawn asked.

  Looking at the small screen near the keypad, Ralath grunted in frustration. “There is every indication that it’s a constructed form of some type, but its assembly differs radically from known Meltranian designs.”

  “Can we see it?” Melissa asked.

  Without another word, Ralath had the image sent to the holographic table. Seconds later, the dimensional image flickered to life, hovering just out of Shawn and Melissa’s reach. What the captain had described as a vessel looked anything but.

  The object was angular, with discernable structures protruding from above and below. The central mass of the thing was made of hundreds of rectangular protrusions, many overlapping one another, all pointing away from the core.

  “How large is that thing?” Shawn asked.

  “Sensors indicate a diameter of three point two units.”

  “Is there a Unified equivalent to that?” the commander quipped.

  Ralath quickly did the calculation in the computer. “Roughly equal to four of your Terran miles.”

  Melissa let out a slow whistle.

  Doctor Uudon stepped forward and examined the slowly spinning image. “It looks more like a space station than a ship.”

  “It is currently stationary.” Ralath nodded in agreement. “However, there are no smaller vessels in the immediate area. If it is a station, then it may likely be automated.”

  “A de
fensive outpost?” Shawn asked.

  “I cannot say for certain. Our computer is unable to locate a comparable. There are no obvious weapon emplacements, but they could easily be concealed inside the structure.”

  “I believe you found the intended location of the signal relayed from Torval, Commander,” Uudon said as he continued to study the structure with fascination.

  “Likely,” Shawn agreed, “but we won’t know for certain until we get on board it.”

  “And just how do you propose to do that, Commander Kestrel?” Ralath asked in disbelief.

  “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. That doesn’t mean we won’t try.”

  Ralath grunted, likely in disapproval. “We will first need to get to it, Commander.”

  Shawn nodded. “I think I have a plan for that.”

  Melissa looked at him with honest surprise. “Really?”

  Shawn turned to Uudon. “Doctor, you said these things … the Meltranians … feed off energy, right? That their whole society may be based on it, correct?”

  “That’s my hypothesis, yes.”

  Shawn then turned to Ralath. “And you said that can’t detect anything that has a zero power output.”

  “It would seem so, Commander,” Ralath agreed. “But, it may only seem that way. Our scientists do not know that for certain.”

  “Well, I think it’s about time we put all these theories to the test.”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to Shawn, who himself was still staring at the image of the alien structure.

  “What do you have in mind?” Melissa asked.

  Shawn turned to Ralath and smiled. “I think it’s time we took Hellnastor back. How long until your assault fleet arrives?”

  “If I relay the signal to the fleet now, it will be roughly two hours. However, we will be detected by the Meltranian warships on the far side of Tevis long before that.”

  “Not if we’re dead.”

  Ralath reeled back in shock. “And how exactly do you intend on convincing the Meltranian of that?”

  “With that.” Shawn craned his head to the visage of the gas giant beyond. “You said that those electrical storms down on Tevis help to mask our signature.”