Carinae Sector: 01 - Traders' Scourge - Part 1 - Alien Flight (15 page)

‘Perhaps by looking with insight like the envoy’s or indeed the professor’s, then additional understanding might be gained into what had happened in this tragic episode.’

The research commander grimly viewed the reports and then called up recent news on the main galactic events occurring elsewhere. Gindane felt that she had missed something during her visit to the human solar system and the subsequent trial.

                                                            ***

Captain Narindestat took in the injuries to his crew bleakly as he walked in the engineering storage area with his constant armed guard. The weeks of fighting the Voorde on the ship had left his crew exhausted. Even travelling in a squad of four with all members armed and in spacesuits, the Voorde drones on this occasion have been exceptionally hard to subdue. He glanced momentarily at the stunned Voorde, with the red furry bodies and the bare red skin of their arms and legs.

Deep slashes from the Voorde drones teeth and claws scoured the suits of the squad members, one squad member was seriously injured by very large claw marks in the front of her suit that had penetrated the suit’s reinforcing. Another squad member had a badly injured arm after he had been picked up and tossed the length of the large room, but both of them would survive. As the captain surveyed the room he established that a large number of Voorde eggs were laid along the wall.

Narindestat then called up a schematic of the area, ‘Some luck at last…’ he thought to himself. With an air of satisfaction he motioned a guard over and softly gave his orders.

‘Quietly now, keep everyone here and fetch the other two squads in the passageway.’

The other two teams had filed into the storage area and joined the captain’s guard, taking the total to three four man squads. There were also the two uninjured squad members of the first patrol guarding their injured squad members. Captain Narindestat first motioned for silence, and then motioned for the first patrol to guard the door. As he motioned to the three full squads, he remembered that his son, Garendestat, was in one of the squads following him.

Back at the door, the two uninjured Trader crewmen propped up their injured companions against side walls and handed them their weapons before they themselves took cover behind crates of spare equipment.

The three squads reached the other end of the storage area and they ensured that all weapons were set to stun. A quick check of the ship schematics had indicated that the alcove against the wall led into an auxiliary station. The captain verified that the doors on the other side of the station had been closed since the Voorde had first been detected, and he then deployed one squad against each wall. Suddenly from two air ducts on either side of the alcove a solid stream of Voorde drones erupted and attacked the waiting Traders.

A vicious battle began, as the Trader weapons on lower power settings still handily disabled the Voorde drones, and within minutes the attack was over. The area littered with unconscious Voorde drones and the few survivors could be heard fleeing back down the air ducts. Garendestat now kicked hard at a crouched Voorde, and broke one of the drone’s naked and red skinned arms. Another crew member also kicked the Voorde before it collapsed from another stun shot. He noted the ferocity of the Voorde drone attack and murmured softly.

‘Sir they are defending something very important.’

Several of the other Traders caught the message thought Narindestat with pride. None of the guards were badly injured although a few had caught the reflected stun blasts from the walls of the storage area. Quickly the guards had draw their long knives and carefully worked over each and every Voorde drone. They ensured that both hearts were pierced; the head removed, and then had securely bound the hands and feet of each drone. The apparent fiction of supposedly dead Voorde drones coming to life again was all too true in the bitter experience of the Trader ship crew.

The Trader captain motioned for silence even as the squad members completed their grisly task. They could hear loud clangs and bangs coming from the inside of the engineering station. Quickly the squads reformed, and two Traders the worst affected by the reflected stun blasts stayed behind to guard the second door. The remaining ten Traders quietly entered the auxiliary station. The captain remotely keyed the lights to full intensity via his suit, and an astonishing sight greeted the crew.

The Traders had cornered the Voorde queen, a massive red skinned nightmare with huge teeth and claws standing over five metres tall, that even now continued to ram the opposite bulkhead doors. The remaining handful of Voorde drones turned and attempted to defend their queen. Within seconds the Trader squads had dropped the drones and turned their stun weapons onto the Voorde queen.

Narindestat grabbed his son’s arm, pulled him back and altered the energy setting on his blaster before pointing at the energy conduits. Garendestat saw what his father was doing and also changed the setting on his blaster to full power and also pointed at the conduits. The two traders crouched behind stanchions on either side near the doorway as the enraged queen Voorde turned on the two Trader squads.

A massive clawed arm lashed out and sent two Traders hurtling the length of the room. As the arm pulled back, the captain risked a shot that punched a hole clean through the queen’s shoulder, causing the extended right arm to drop to the huge beast’s side. Garendestat also took a shot, but only badly grazed the queen’s left thigh and deeply scoured the bulkhead door behind. A shriek of anger and rage issued from the Voorde queen and she charged back across the full length of the auxiliary station to the other doorway. The other squad members had the presence of mind to shout ‘all down’ over their radios and had then they dropped smoke flares. Even as the flares had begun to obscure the room, both Narindestat and Garendestat had hit the Voorde queen solidly in the abdomen with blaster shots from their blasters.

Both Traders were aware of a rapidly moving mass that had smashed in turn into each of the stanchions they were crouching behind. Before the massive Voorde queen staggered out into the storage area and was engaged by the other waiting Traders. The queen had paused to strike one trader a glancing blow with her good left arm, before staggering several metres further into the storage area.

Narindestat and Garendestat had yelled over the radio for all the other squad members nearby to stay down and had followed the queen into the storage area. Calmly the two Traders placed several more blaster shots into the massive Voorde form. They both waited until the queen fell then raced over with their knives to ensure the queen was very dead. From the auxiliary station came confirmation that only one crew member was injured, and that all Voorde drones had been confirmed as killed.

Captain Narindestat’s relief at killing the Voorde queen was short-lived, as a further message from the auxiliary station confirmed a deep fear, for the eaten remains of Trader crew were scattered in that location. The sombre crew scrapped the eggs on the wall into waiting bags, then sectioned and bagged the dead Voorde into larger bags. The crew finally dragged the bags into the large rear airlock overlooking the massive engines.

Narindestat and Garendestat took sole responsibility for carefully packing the pitiful remains of their lost crew into a sole bag that soon joined the other bags in the rear airlock. Narindestat now radioed a call to first lieutenant Kureldestat on the bridge as Garendestat closed the inner door of the airlock.

‘Captain to Kureldestat, please give me a minute long ten percent burn on the main fusion engines in two minutes. Note that we will have the passing over ceremony in the main cargo space in four hours.’

 The bridge crew replied to confirm the order, the engines soon flared into life, and a low rumble shook the deck around the Traders. The captain pressed the emergency override on the airlock, and the pressurised air shot the bags into the exhaust plume of the fusion drive, whereupon they were promptly vaporised.

In the main cargo hold stood the research rig, a portable structure heavily secured to the main cargo hold floor near the now closed external doors. The research rig now held a deadly surprise. The air tight and heavily shielded research rig contained several Voorde drones and an immature queen that had hidden from the dominant queen and gone into hibernation. The lack of mental presence of the dominant queen had caused the new queen to awaken. She had mated with several drones, and quietly sent them out hunting for both easy Trader targets and remaining drones belonging to the former queen. Both types of target were to be killed and eaten, there was never any doubt about that, as the new queen started to nest in the research rig.

The saddened Traders later held their funeral service for their dead crew members. The sad songs and chanting of the service hid the small noises the remaining Voorde drones made as they moved away to other parts of the ship.

                                                            ***

Omerio cautiously slowed his fast trading ship well away from any objects in the system that might hold an ambush. He was well aware that at least one Tilmud admiral knew entirely too much about the young Barus trader, and would not hesitate to eliminate him if he could get his massive paws on him. The Vorinne envoy had been specific about finding out information about the unknown ship, and also knew nothing about his other reason for entering the star system. Omerio had no intention of informing the envoy of anything more than he needed to about anything.

‘The trick is to know what to keep silent about.’ He thought dispassionately.

Ensuring the stealth system on his ship was fully functional, Omerio began passive scans as the ship slowly moved over to the last known location of his surveillance probe. The traces he was getting about the star system from his own ship’s sensors proved very interesting. Apparently the Trader ship had stayed in this system for an extended period during which it had encountered another ship.

Omerio tentatively identified the second ship as a Jerecab freighter. He noted that two ships appeared to have gone down to land on the surface of the second planet, and from what Omerio could tell had stayed on the planet for an extended period.

‘That does not make sense’ Omerio thought to himself. ‘Captain Narindestat was keen to leave this system in days.’

The trace of the mysterious ship trace he had discovered earlier had returned and then followed the Jerecab ship from this system. As his ship had finally reached the probe, Omerio had surmised that these events had happened when the Trader ship had already left. The probe was now at a low power setting, but was still fully functional, a status he could verify when the probe was finally in his ship’s hold.

Omerio did not even pause to scan the results from the probe. He quickly reversed course and the ship accelerated for few hours at high velocity into the outskirts of the star system. Selecting an ice ball with several others nearby, Omerio moved his ship between the icy planetoids and he soon powered down the ship’s drive.

After activating a continuous scan of the surrounding areas of space, he then ensured that his ship’s stealth system remained active. Omerio finally took the chance to order a meal from the ship’s small auto galley. Omerio had soon settled down for a leisurely read of the data his probe had recovered, both for the Trader ship, and also the strange earlier ship. For the next several hours, the well trained scientific mind of the former Barus space fleet officer was amazed at the new information laid out before his eyes.

                                                            ***

Steve, Samantha and Dan, all wearing snorkels and flippers, swam leisurely around the edge of the heavily built sea pen off the east coast of Malaysia. Frequently one of them would dive down several metres, and use their underwater cameras to take photos of the enormous school of juvenile snapper that milled calmly around the centre of the sea pen. The three partners had earlier visited the equally massive dhufish sea pen a few kilometres north that included lesser numbers of juvenile dhufish.

Dan was still working on increasing the lesser numbers of dhufish in the sea pen. But he was always pointing out that Australian researchers had known for fifty years that dhufish were notoriously difficult to breed. Dan considered that their partnership, in conjunction with the Malaysian consortium, had achieved the best results ever in raising this difficult to breed species.

The aid missions by the Aurora Discovery to Irian Jaya and other parts of Indonesia, as well as to Malaysia had progressed well since Steve had the ship upgraded in Perth two months earlier. The ship now had a decent helicopter that had proven invaluable in ferrying goods ashore for the aid missions. The Lotus Marai was already halfway back to Geraldton to refuel, and Steve was taking the Aurora Discovery back to Australia this evening after they had enjoyed a final meal with Mr Lee senior and his family.

After the three partners had finished taking their photos, they got out of the water and threw towels around themselves. Gyuan Lee had since raced up to the sea pen in one of his runabouts and had spoken hurriedly to the sea pen supervisor. The Australians were just about to take their own runabout back to their nearby ship, when Gyuan raced over to speak to them as well.

‘Steve, one of the service divers at the sea pen further north has made an interesting discovery and we thought that with your navy background we should tell you about it.’

Steve listened with new interest as Gyuan stated further.

‘We understand that authorities around the world for the last ten years have specified that any unknown objects taken from the ocean should be forwarded to them for careful study.’

Steve got Gyuan to join them in his faster runabout and they all made the quick journey back to the dhufish sea pen. The runabout was soon tied up next to the aquaculture support barge. Within minutes Steve and his excited crew were carefully handling a long black curved panel about four metres long. Dan accessed his satellite linked tablet pc and checked for reliable information about what they had in front of them. Samantha saw Dan now go still and look at them both in amazement.