Carinae Sector: 01 - Traders' Scourge - Part 1 - Alien Flight (16 page)

‘Dan, you are saying that this panel is an unknown object that the authorities are interested in finding?’

 Dan nodded to them speechless for a moment, and an excited Steve took up the conversation.

‘Hey look at the weight of this panel, is about a third of the weight of a carbon fibre panel of similar size we would see on navy equipment, and it is extremely rigid as well. There is some discolouration at the forward end, but no scouring from being in the ocean for what must have been several years.’

After he quickly called Mr Lee senior for several minutes via satellite phone, Steve regrettably cancelled the evening meal ashore. Steve then offered to take the panel back to Australia after spending another two days searching for any additional panels. The crew of Aurora Discovery spent the next two days searching the sea floor around the sea pen for several hundred yards and found another panel.

Gyuan Lee was later delivered back to the Aurora Discovery, as he was journeying with them to Australia to inspect the sea pens at Geraldton and Albany. Mr Lee senior himself came aboard to see his son off, and they enjoyed a hasty arranged seafood dinner with good Australian wine that included some of their own aquaculture produce. After dinner Steve and his crew took Mr Lee and his son to see the two strange panels, now guarded by two of Steve’s former navy crew in the equipment storage section. Mr Lee senior was suddenly sombre as he viewed the panels and spoke to Steve.

‘So this is when the nightmare began according to the US authorities.’

Steve nodded his agreement as he studied the panels again, pointing out what little they had learned of them by fitting them together.

‘Now you can see they would enclose a large cylinder roughly a metre across if the other two panels are the same shape. The shape reminds me of a missile shroud for some reason, including the fact that the front of these panels seem to have been heated to a very high temperature.’

The other people present now became sombre as they looked over the panels, and remembered the enormous loss of life associated with these objects. For several nights during the sea voyage back to Perth, Steve and his crew would closely examine the objects. They would take photos and material samples, and continue to be amazed by the implications of the existence of these strange panels.

                                                            ***

Gindane paced her quarters, and thought about what she had read from the reports of the two junior engineering technicians, and also had read from the ship’s data library. The sequence of events was what had attracted the Vorinne envoy’s interest during the trial. Indeed the envoy had directly charged the surviving engineers in having known and handled the vials that found their way aboard the bio probes.

The junior engineers to their credit had stuck to their strong defence of not knowing anything about the vials in the probes. They insisted they had only helped Wanerio load the probes into the launching the probes when they returned from their lunch. At the time Omerio and the two Cephrit judges had not been really involved in the questioning of the female engineers. This was a development that Gindane had attributed to their previous questioning in earlier days of the trial.

Acting on a hunch, Gindane accessed the investigative data that the judges had supplied to her under Cephrit law after the trial was concluded. The electronic notes for the data was keyed a different colour for each of the three judges reporting. She knew though that the Vorinne envoy could exercise her discretion and not leave any notes due to her eminent rank amongst the judges. If the actions of the envoy as chief judge for a day had in turn rankled the two Cephrit judges, that was something no one had been able to establish or would discuss for obviously powerful reasons.

Gindane accessed the electronic notes from the Cephrit station master and referenced them back to the reports of the trial. When the report for the late senior engineer was tabled the station master had added a reference to an acolyte that had been removed for accessing restricted parts of the star base. Gindane looked at the time stamp for the reference on her ships computer that retained a copy of general unrestricted news for Cephrit Star Base 31 spanning over several years.

‘There it was’ thought Gindane with considerable chagrin.

The Deltas Vass acolyte, an older Barus that worked in the administration section of the star base, had been convicted of criminal trespass several years ago. He had been heavily fined and then sent back to Barus space in disgrace.

‘Not unlike my own situation.’ thought Gindane sourly.

The second Cephrit had also been a judge in the short trial of the acolyte, and Gindane accessed his electronic notes as well. But after reading the brief notes for two minutes the researcher was only further confused.

 ‘So what does the reference to the Dradfer mean?’ The researcher re-read the second Cephrit’s vague reference, but she could see no cross connection with the senior technician in particular, and her own later trial at all.

Gindane started looking at other sections of the Cephrit judges trial notes, and was getting nowhere fast. One of the Cephrit judges had written ‘Tilmud vendetta’ at one point as only two words with no reference.

‘Possibly referring to one of the Tilmud admiral’s explosive exchanges…’ thought Gindane.

At a later point in her trial the station master had written a comment relating to the research ships trip back to star base 31. He had stated that the method of Omerio’s at the trial was to be kept secret. Now Gindane’s curiosity was truly stirred and she accessed the electronic trial notes set aside by Omerio.

First she looked at the reference to the dead engineer, but was soon disappointed in that only two words, ‘Life Chapter’, appearing in Omerio’s notes section for that reference. Gindane sat back and thought about this revelation, as literally ‘Life Chapter’ meant peaceful political and social dissent.

So what was the link between the acolyte and the dead senior engineer? Especially as the engineer had been sworn to secrecy when he was retained for the mission?’

The Vorinne envoy had later markedly changed the direction of the trial after her eerie initial assessment of the junior engineers. Gindane was well aware of the change of trial direction, and indeed grateful of the change, as it had resulted in limited punishment from the powerful envoy.

However Gindane did not understand the why of the changed trail outcome, especially when the previous Tilmud judge was within days of executing Gindane and her crew. She was now sure that the trip back to Professor Elysius and the rest of the research expedition would not being boring. Gindane again sat down at her console in her quarters, and let her exceptional analytical mind review all the information she had in front of her.

                                                            ***

Captain Narindestat stalked his hangar deck in cold anger. His invective at the Maveen lead probe fastened to the deck in his cargo hold had been met with cool indifference on the part of the lead probe. The infernal device had just stared at him via the metre long blue vision strip and remained silent. The captain looked over his notes, rubbed his cheek tattoo by habit, and began again to lecture the probe.

‘Now surely you can understand my request for assistance, several of my crew, including a couple of my best engineers, have been killed by the Voorde infestation. We are low on all the consumables that we organic life forms need to survive, and we cannot just dock anywhere with the Voorde infestation on our ship.’

The captain paused and continued on again after a moment.

‘We are not asking the Maveen to destroy the Voorde infestation. We merely ask you to help us detect them so that we can destroy them.’

The Maveen lead probe merely looked at him again with that frigid stare from the blue vision strip and replied in a cool electronic voice.

‘We are not concerned with the limitations of your lifecycle captain, and we wish that you only honour our travelling agreement.’

The captain seriously considered, but abandoned the option of leaving the Maveen probes behind in interstellar space. He also toyed with the very poor choice of shooting the Maveen lead probe with his blaster. Still struggling for calm, Captain Narindestat became aware of Kureldestat and Garendestat striding across the hold towards him. The captain suppressed a further groan of annoyance and spoke.

‘Lieutenant, I asked not be disturbed as I speak to the lead probe, what do you want?’ The lieutenant calmly looked over the Maveen lead probe, which totally ignored him, before replying to the captain.

‘Sir, sneak ship three has returned with all orders completed. The safety of the crew has not been affected.’

 The captain made motions for silence, and mentally thanked his son for his nous. But he pointed at the Maveen probe as he spoke again.

‘Thank you lieutenant, please return to the bridge immediately. I will be along shortly. Kureldestat, please stay for a moment.’

As the lieutenant calmly strode away, Captain Narindestat again spoke to the lead probe.

‘Well one of my ships has returned and it has been accompanied by a ship piloted by the station master of Cephrit 31.’

The Maveen lead probe came alive with the news, with navigation lights appearing, and sensors also extending from the top one third of the probe. The other probes next to the lead probe also opened their blue vision slots and thin blue beams of light shone between the probes as they began a conversation. As quickly as the conversation began it was ended and the lead probe spoke again.

‘We will assist your ship by both detecting the Voorde and doing limited repairs under the direction of your engineers. Note that our smallest detection sub-probes cannot see through shielded sections of your ship. The sub-probes may fire on the Voorde, especially if they are cornered. Remember that we are the senior race as per our trade agreement. We therefore specify in this instance, a reward or deed of gift that will be detailed later both as our right and our due. You will also obey our later instructions to the letter as we seek to complete our mission.’

With no further delay, access slots on two Maveen probes opened, and several black stick like utility sub-probes exited and hovered above the cargo hold deck. The small sub-probes featured a glowing bulbous helmet that shielded large electronic eyes that looked surprisingly life-like even if they had no mouths. The rest of the body consisted of two thin arms and two thin legs that dangled from the slightly thicker body, with the body plan of the smallest Maveen forms being generally bipedal.

The captain considered briefly the significance of the thin red and yellow stripes down the arms and legs of the smaller probes. The sub-probes spread through the large ship and began to search, as Captain Narindestat politely thanked the lead probe and headed back to the bridge of his ship. Once he was away from the probes, the captain gave Kureldestat orders to take a squad and discretely follow the probes.

In the shielded heavy research rig at the far end of the cargo hold from the Maveen probes, the deadly occupants of the rig were again in hibernation. They had successfully hunting and devoured two rogue Voorde drones and a Trader foolish enough to be alone and unarmed.

                                                            ***

Omerio had finished reading the sensor data and had carefully piloted his ship across the star system. He was again giving a wide berth to the planets and larger asteroids that might hide ambushing Tilmud frigates. The trading ship easily followed the older traces of the larger ships as they moved well out from the system before activating their jump drives. The large Trader ship appeared to have used the powerful type two hyper drive module, as a predictive trace appeared impossible to establish due to the high energy ionization effects of the drive. Omerio hoped that Captain Narindestat and his crew were well away from this star system by now and safe.

The Barus trader then analysed the drive traces for the other two ships, and noted that the strange ship appeared to be tracking the Jerecab ship. Omerio laid in a course that followed the common trail. He set a good offset so that he would not blunder into visual range, a potentially fatal error if they were still in this system.

But as he reached the other side of the star system, he finally detected the faint earlier traces of type one hyper drives being deployed as much as a week earlier. Omerio made a quick check on the adjacent star system and conferred with his star chart. The two ships were talking a course into a more populated section of the galaxy.

As his ship make its way to edge of the system, Omerio rechecked the navigation details for the next star system and made calculations for a hyper drive jump of his own. With the course laid in, he relaxed for several moments as the hyper drive field enveloped his ship and the streaked starlight of hyper space came into view.

                                                            ***

Chapter 8

January 2051AD

Admiral Biruldesec quivered in rage, as the Jerecab freighter had travelled alarmingly close to docking at the military station, before it had made a navigation error and missed a course change. The Jerecab had requested an emergency docking, but would not state what the problem was, only that the Tilmud supply heavily armed guards at the docking port.

The livid station controller had earlier berated the Jerecab Captain, but had not received an immediate response even as escorting corvettes dodged the wayward freighter. The controller had directed another flight of small ships to investigate the problem, and as the corvettes had reached the ship they had detected small weapons fire coming from within the Jerecab ship.

As the controller received the news he immediately ordered the freighter to haul away from the station and await boarding from Tilmud marines. The Jerecab captain had then broadcast a mayday and quarantine notice stating that his crew were under heavy attack from Voorde on his ship. His remaining crew were confined to the bridge of their ship, and sounds of battle could clearly be heard coming from the Jerecab ship over the communications link.