Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) (10 page)

Chapter Eight

“Wow!” Ian exclaimed as he watched the clouds surrounding his ship give way to clear sky. Through the front windows of the
Cahill Express
,
he could see the inviting surface of a planet far below. Just above him showing through gaps in the clouds was the darkness of space. From this angle, however, Ian saw the nearly invisible shimmer of something between his ship and the stars.

But other than the view, his situation had not changed appreciably. Ian still had no control of his ship, which seemed to be in the grip of some sort of tractor ray. Who controlled that ray, and their intentions were also unknowns, but the trader was not too worried. Obviously, if they had wanted him dead, they would not have gone to the trouble of bringing him and his ship down intact.

All I have to do is wait
, Ian reasoned. Eventually, he would meet whoever was behind this fascinating technology.

A glance at his nav board showed that he was still on a vector paralleling the surface below and he felt an almost imperceptible change in the tractor effect. Considering the distance he had already traveled horizontally, a hand-off from one ray to another would make sense. No ray that he knew of could operate on anything but line-of-sight. Except at extremely low frequencies, electromagnetic waves could not bend around the curved surface of a planet.

Angling down, the
Cahill Express
slowed when it entered the lower reaches of the atmosphere. Ian was able to discern towns and highways scattered across the land mass. He was admiring a bustling seaport when a pair of interceptors appeared, one on each side of him. Surprisingly, the markings on their sides were in block letters of Axia standard. His comm system indicated that a signal was being broadcast at him. At a flip of a switch, his comm adjusted itself to the incoming transmission.

Immediately, the signal came through over the speaker. “...alien craft, do not attempt to use your controls,” the accented voice said from the speaker.

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Ian said while he watched the two craft warily through his side windows. Their piloting skill in maintaining formation bespoke of them being professional pilots. Clearly, he and his ship were being evaluated. Was he a threat or not? Ian glanced at his weapons console.

“Use of your weapons will be considered a hostile act and will be dealt with accordingly,” the voice on the speaker intoned. Ian flinched.

Deciding to respond, he grabbed the mic. “Attention escorts. You have my cooperation. What preparations should I make for landing?”

“That should get ‘em,” Ian said aloud after releasing the key on his microphone. “Agree with them and then ask questions. Gives you control of the conversation every time!” Apparently it worked.

“Alien craft...,” the escort replied and then there was a long pause. “...please stand by.”

Ian grinned. He could imagine all the crosstalk between the escorts and their controller on the ground. He was tempted to try to tap into their channel but decided it might not be worth the risk. Anyone who could mask an entire planet and had tractor rays of this power might also be able to detect his eavesdropping on their signals.

Through the front windows of his ship, Ian made out what appeared to be some sort of landing field in the distance. He could tell from the movements of his escorts and his own trajectory that this was their probable destination. From this distance, he could not discern any sort of antenna station that might be the source of this tractor ray.

“Alien craft,” the escort again intoned. “Do you require any special power hookups for your vessel? From our inspection, you appear to use a variant of the standard Axia ground connections.” Ian’s ears perked up at the mention of the word Axia.

“Negative, but thank you,” Ian replied pleasantly; another trick—kill’em with kindness. “I can maintain ship function with internal power, and thanks to your landing ray, my tanks are cool and do not need changing.”

His emphasis on the words landing ray was a deliberate attempt to re-label the tractor ray they were using. It frustrated him not to have control of his ship but he wasn’t about to let them know it. It was better they think he considered it a welcome service provided.
Keep them off balance
, as he was so fond of saying.

“Acknowledged,” the escort replied. “After landing, keep your ship sealed while it is decontaminated. You will be notified when it is safe to open your hatch.”

“Understood,” Ian answered back while he pondered this development. Ship decontamination was rare these days, and the
Cahill Express
had been through the procedure only once in the many years he had been flying it. That rare exception had been when visiting an off-the-beaten-path independent planet.

The fact that this planet followed this archaic procedure bespoke several things. First, the practice had fallen into disuse a couple of generations back in the Axia. That suggested these folks were a bit out of touch. What he could also surmise is that they had very few visitors. The hint of paranoia such a practice indicated meant he might also run into some rather provincial attitudes when he did meet these people. The trader smiled at the prospect of meeting a possibly lost branch of humanity.

His escorts peeled off neatly and headed down toward the facility they were approaching. Again, Ian smiled. Someone somewhere had decided he was not a serious threat.

Now that he wasn’t being as closely observed, Ian activated his optical magnifier and focused it on the facility below. He quickly noted similarities to standard landing fields throughout the Axia. He wasn’t sure if this indicated a similar background or just a matter of function denoting design. In either case, it gave him one additional bit of information to file away for future reference.

Ian quickly scanned the surface, hoping to find the source of the tractor beam. Since it was the one unusual thing, it should stand out. But try as he might, he could not locate anything that appeared to be a transmitting array.

“Well, if it’s not there it must be someplace else,” he said to himself as he widened his field of search. Clearly, it would have to be line-of-sight to the landing field if they intended to bring his ship to ground with it. Scanning outward from the obvious landing zone, he started checking the different hills and rises surrounding the facility.

A flicker of distortion on one of the hilltops caught his eye. Magnifying the hill showed him a partially buried bunker-like structure. Atop the bluff above it was a somewhat squat array of odd-looking equipment. Looking directly at the array, Ian again noted the flicker of distortion shrouded in a hint of purple haze.

Now that he knew what to look for, he quickly surveyed other hilltops. That was how he discovered the second tractor projector array. As with the first, this one had the telltale distortion. Clearly, there were now two beams fixed on his ship, which told Ian there must be some third location to which they were slaved. This was just another piece of information Ian would file away in the archives of his mind.

He felt the
Express
shift a little as its forward motion slowed considerably. Then it started downward in an angled approach to the landing field. From this vantage point, Ian mentally catalogued different features. Besides its various obvious amenities, there was a general sense of disuse about the place. Nothing specific stood out to suggest it but Ian was willing to bet it hadn’t received a ship in quite a while.

Movement off to one side again caught Ian’s attention. It turned out to be the escort ships swinging in to land on a pad some distance from where they were directing his ship. Even from here, Ian could see that it was a much newer facility compared to the landing field below.

“Prepare for landing,” a voice intoned over the speaker. Without waiting for him to acknowledge, the movement of his ship again shifted, this time vertically toward a landing pad below. Ian noted a structure of concrete walls surrounding this pad. As he drew lower, he spotted nozzles along the top of the walls, confirming his suspicion that this was their decontamination area. With a very slight bump, the
Cahill Express
grounded in the center of the pad.

“Not bad,” Ian admitted when he felt a tremor run through his ship. Handling a multi-ton ship suspended in a tractor ray would require a fine touch when it came to landing. He suspected the tremor indicated that the tractor beam was now disengaged. Ian ignored the temptation to power his ship back up and flee. Considering the precautions these people were taking, he suspected that not only did they still have some way to dampen his ship’s systems but probably also had yet another way to keep his ship grounded in the quarantine area.

“Please power your ship down to allow proper decontamination,” the disembodied voice again said over the speaker. “A green light will flash in front of your ship when it is permissible to power your systems back up.”

“Acknowledged,” Ian replied. “I am familiar with the process.”

Whoever was on the other end did not reply, but Ian didn’t really expect them to. All he wanted to do with the acknowledgment was to lay one more piece of familiarity in the bridge he was trying to build to these people.

Reaching up with his right hand, Ian moved the throttle to the full off position. With a flick of a few more switches, all the subordinate systems of the
Cahill Express
shut down. The ship seemed unnaturally quiet without the background noise of machinery. Removing his safety straps, Ian settled down to wait.

With a whoosh, the nozzles started covering the
Cahill Express
in green foam. Ian watched it cover the outside windows of his ship. Although not familiar with whatever they were using, he suspected it was some anti-biological agent. In the experience of the Axia, this procedure was unnecessary for today’s ships. Even through the repulsion field, enough heat was generated upon entering an atmosphere to thoroughly disinfect the skin of a ship. As it turned out, there was the added advantage of resealing the metal as well, considerably prolonging the service life of the ships.

Chemical decontamination harkened back to much older practices. Earlier ships tended to come in slow and easy when approaching a planet. To do otherwise risked overheating the heat sink tanks on the ships. In those cases, the repulsion field acted to protect any biological material that may be on the skin of a ship.

Before the new drives made the practice obsolete, all ships were decontaminated. Now with the process done automatically upon entry by the faster, hotter ships, almost no one went through the messy decontamination process. Granted, all landing fields still had a decontamination area in case the need should arise, but again it was the exception to the rule.

Through the skin of his ship, Ian heard the nozzles change from spraying foam to liquid. If this were like his one previous experience, it would be a hot chemical solution that would work with the foam to scour every inch of his ship.

That’s all it better do
, Ian thought while he considered his vessel’s new paint job. Although the paint was guaranteed to hold up under the usual heat associated with a hot reentry, who knew how it would react to strange chemical mixtures?

Ian watched the different patterns in the foam on the front windows of the
Express
as the nozzles changed to a pulsating flow. Then the spray changed to a steady overall wash that caused the foam to change from green to clear and sheet off the windows like rivulets of water flowing down a mountain. In seconds, there was not a sign of foam anywhere on the outside of the ship.

Ian reached up and grasped the throttle bar just as a green light started flashing out front. He threw the switches with his left hand, powering up his different systems.

Almost immediately, a voice sounded over the comm system. “Please stand by. Your ship will be relocated to an open landing pad.”

The
Cahill Express
quivered as the tractor rays took hold again. In a smooth motion, the ship lifted out of the decontamination bay and moved laterally to an empty standard landing pad. Ian was not surprised that all the landing pads appeared empty in spite of the implication by whomever was on the comm. Someone was clearly following a written procedure regardless of whether it made sense under the current circumstances.

The ship quivered again as the tractor rays released their grip. Ian locked down the controls and pushed up out of the control chair.

“Decontamination complete,” intoned the voice over the speaker again as if it wasn’t obvious. “You may now safely open your hatch. Remain in your vessel. The dock master must authorize your egress.”

Ian sighed to himself. Stepping across the control room of the
Express
, he activated the lock controls. Through the small window on the inner door, he could see a bevy of officials approaching his hatch. Two of the younger ones appeared to be carrying some sort of equipment.

“Snooper scopes,” he grunted, recognizing their purpose.
All according to procedure,
Ian thought as he opened the hatch. The lead official, after a brief but nervous inspection of Ian wearing his sidearm and shoulder holster, stepped inside.

He’d considered removing his weapons but decided against it considering he didn’t know these people or their true intentions. None of them looked dangerous, but then again, neither did that little fellow on Tyrus 3 before he jumped on Ian’s back and tried to bite him on the neck. A person just couldn’t be too careful if he wanted to survive.

“Welcome to Vogel,” the official said somewhat stiffly. Behind him entered his small welcoming team with their equipment. Activating it, they gave the inside of the ship a quick sweep. A green light came on, and after a nod from the lead official, his team retreated outside.

The lead official, Coffey by his nametag, relaxed noticeably. “There, that’s done,” he said after he and Ian were alone. “Again, welcome to Vogel. You are the first visitor we’ve had in a very long time.” Noting the man’s nervousness at the armed visitor, Ian smiled a wry and knowing smile.