First Contact (Galactic Axia Adventure) (6 page)

The ship proceeded quickly toward the designated base. Delmar called in and received clearance for approach and landing. As the started its downward motion, the examiner flipped a secret switch. Immediately, the ship lurched as the drive faltered.

Delmar didn’t have time to think about the exam anymore. Instead, he began the emergency procedure suggested for such a situation. “Hold on, sir,” he announced. “We have a little problem here.”

With a light touch on the axis ball to constantly correct for the ship’s erratically shifting attitude, Delmar feathered the throttle with his right hand. Changing to a foot comm switch, he called the base controller to report the emergency and ask for a crash crew to stand by. The front windows of the shaking ship lit up as the base’s levitation ray swung around to track him. The controller informed him that the crash crew was standing by.

The trainer, barely in Delmar’s control, rocketed through the atmosphere as it bypassed the normal landing pattern. Atmospheric friction fire enveloped the ship, leaving a smoking trail behind them. Delmar lifted the nose of the ship a degree to spill off some of their speed and eliminate the friction but the trainer continued its meteoric plunge through the atmosphere toward the surface below.
This isn’t going to look good on my record,
he thought
. Student kills examiner on test flight. Failing grade received.

Vibrations like none he’d ever felt reverberated through the ship. Doubts filled his mind that he would be able to control the trainer to a safe landing. He wondered why the base levitation rays hadn’t made contact with them yet to help him control their descent. Surely they weren’t going too fast for the rays to connect. He glanced back at the examiner who sat stoic in his seat.
He’s taking notes. The man must have ice water in his veins
.

After what felt like hours but had only been moments, Delmar felt the ship respond to his desperate feathering of the controls. The fire that had enveloped the ship spilled away as he regained control. The planet loomed large in the window and Delmar could see they were still on course for the base emergency-landing zone despite an out of control reentry that should have crashed them on the far side of the planet.
How is that possible?

Fighting the controls with every ounce of his strength, the ship bucking like a wild stallion, Delmar gained control. Wind shear pushed the small ship from side to side, and gravity fought against the inertial dampeners used to control the speed of their descent. As the emergency landing pad drew nearer, and the ship hadn’t ripped apart in midair around them, Delmar knew their fate was only moments away. He’d either be able to control their landing, or they would end up a shattered heap of twisted metal on the ground. Either way, he figured his test scores would indicated he had no reason to believe he would ever fly again.

  With one final desperate effort, Delmar lifted the nose of the craft skyward just before the landing skids touched the ground. He chopped the power and allowed the ship to free fall the last six feet to the concrete pad below. The inertial dampeners caused the ship to bounce back into the air several feet before skidding to a smoking halt on the landing pad. The emergency crews that should have swarmed the crashed ship and covered it with retardant foam never appeared. To Delmar’s dismay, the emergency hatch did not blow open, even though he knew he’d examined it in his pre-flight inspection.

Sitting in his command chair, shaken and desperate for any word from his passenger, he turned around to look at the examiner. To his surprise, the man was sitting there looking bored. Delmar turned back around and wondered what to do next. As soon as Delmar’s head was turned back around, the examiner reset the secret switch for normal operation.

“Take us back to the main base on Rodar,” the examiner said calmly. He watched in amusement as Delmar paused at the instruction.

Delmar examined his instruments and felt the pressure of his main controls. Everything appeared to be normal.
How can this be?
he wondered.
My ship is a wreck and he wants me return us to base?

“Acknowledged,” Delmar answered. He was weary from the constant pressure being applied by the examiner. He called the base controller and received clearance to lift-off.
Here goes nothing
, he thought. Delmar advanced the throttle and to his surprise the ship responded normally. The ship lifted and Delmar set their course back toward the training base on Rodar. The examiner spoke again.

“Divert to the Rodar-9 test range.” Delmar contacted Rodar Control for the necessary clearances. Swinging the ship around, he advanced the throttle again and the ship sped toward the outer edge of the star system. He was amazed the little ship exhibited none of the damage he was sure they’d suffered on their fireball approach to the emergency landing pad. He realized at that moment that the trainers must have been specially outfitted to withstand enormous pressure, and had been equipped with special fire retardant outer skin. How else could it have withstood their fiery entry and rough landing?

Within minutes they arrived at the range. “Contact the range controller and ask for scenario R-45,” the examiner ordered.

Delmar activated the comm and requested the scenario as instructed. He gulped and tightened his grip on the throttle. All of the trainees had been put through their paces on the range. The purpose was to train them in operation of the ship’s weapons while under combat conditions. What made Delmar anxious was that they always trained with the low letter training scenarios. The highest scenario that Delmar had heard of a student qualifying on was in the upper “G” series. R-45 was midway in the “R” series, which were reserved for the advanced courses and postgraduate trainees. That his examiner had chosen a scenario far advanced of what Delmar had trained on convinced the harried student that his examiner was a Red-tail in disguise.

The controller announced that the scenario was set and gave Delmar the entrance coordinates. “Course set and ready, sir,” Delmar told the examiner. The man scribbled on his notepad and then paused as if waiting for something to happen. Again, Delmar feared that in his anxiety he’d missed an important procedural step but his mind drew a blank when he tried to figure it out.

“Begin the course,” the examiner ordered, still not looking up from his notepad. Delmar set the ship into motion and activated the weapon systems.

As soon as the little ship entered the course gate, enemy targets converged on them from all sides. To make it even more interesting, energy rays of various strengths were also being fired at the patroller. This last was a new wrinkle Delmar had never experienced before.

Twisting the axis control rapidly back and forth, Delmar caused the ship to spin and slide as he fired at the flying targets. With motions too fast to think about, Delmar maneuvered the ship to avoid the energy rays as he proceeded down the course. The hull rang occasionally when a ray connected with the twisting ship.

Just when Delmar was beginning to decipher the pattern of the incoming fire, the course suddenly changed and increased its firing rate. At the same time, the targets changed into moving Red-tail ships that fired as they flew at him. From that point on the rest of the course became a blur in his memory as Delmar fought and twisted his way through the range! Time seemed to stop as life became one continuous series of twist, turn, fire, dodge and fight. But before he knew it, they were through the course and the range controller had him pause in a holding area. Delmar brought the ship to a standstill and waited for the dreaded score.

“T-887 this is Range Control,” the controller’s voice came back over the speaker. “You achieved an eighty-nine on scenario R-45. Do you copy?” The high score momentarily stunned Delmar.

“Yes, we copy,” Delmar finally replied. “Thank you for the use of the range.”

“You’re welcome T-887. Range control out.”

“Return us to home base, Mr. Eagleman,” the examiner ordered.

“Acknowledged.” Delmar set the ship in motion. He glanced back at the examiner who still sat stoic as if today had been just another boring day at the office.

Thirty minutes later they were again on the concrete apron on Rodar. Delmar completed the shut down and exit procedure and the examiner followed him out of the ship. They walked together in silence to the examiner’s office where the man had Delmar sit down. To Delmar’s surprise, the examiner reached in a desk and tossed the young trooper a food bar and nodded toward a water cooler in the corner. Delmar took the hint, got up and poured both of them a glass of water. By the time he was seated again, the examiner was sitting behind his desk waiting for the student.

“These will help,” the examiner said, nodding toward the food bar and water sitting before the tired student. “It’s not unusual for your blood sugar to be low after what you’ve been through. Helps keep you thinking clearly. Remember it in the future.”

“Yes sir,” Delmar replied as he peeled open the bar and bit in. Normally tough, the bar tasted like sweet nectar to the frazzled student. Delmar continued to eat the bar while he watched the examiner write a few more comments on the test sheet and then sign it. Pulling it off the clipboard, he handed it across to Delmar then turned to an engraving machine in the corner of his office.

Delmar took the form, dreading what it would say about his performance. To his surprise there were few negative marks on the long checklist. Along the edge it had several crude sketches of flying ships and a comment written across the bottom—
Thanks for a fun ride!
Below that was the examiner’s signature. When Delmar looked up the man was smiling at him.

“You scored among the best that I have ever seen here at this school,” he announced. “I almost got bored waiting for you to slip up.”

“But what about all that scribbling you did?” Delmar asked, bewildered.

“I did that to make you nervous,” the examiner replied with a grin. “That way we get a better idea of how you’ll operate in a crisis.”

“But I almost destroyed the ship.”

The examiner laughed. “Not a chance, son. Those trainers are designed to take the abuse we put them though. I’d fly one of them over a regular scout any day.”

“Am I through then, sir?”

“Yes, except for one thing.” The examiner reached across the desk to the shocked student. “Here’s something you never expected to see!” He placed a newly minted captain’s plate into Delmar’s shaking hands.

“Congratulations, Captain Eagleman. You earned this.”

Chapter Four

Darkness had finally fallen. The outside night air was cold and crisp. But inside the hidden lab the stale, humid air was rife with tension. For what seemed like countless hours the secret research team had labored over the signals recorded on the purloined disc. Their efforts to decipher each signal taxed their combined ingenuity. Frequently, after considerable effort, they’d find a signal to be just a variation of one of the naturally occurring radio signals from nearby stars—nothing but stellar static masking those irregular and artificial signals denoting intelligence and life.

After discarding many false leads, the team ended up with a few signals they couldn’t easily explain away. All were virtually within the regular electromagnetic bands already familiar to the scientists. It was while examining each of the few signals they’d gleaned from this group that one of the scientists had an epiphany.

“How many are within the capabilities of our own equipment?” the woman asked, looking up from signal readings spread out in front of her on the work table.

“All but about four or five,” one of her colleagues answered. “The rest I can duplicate using standard lab equipment.”

“Tell me what you can about these four or five signals that fall outside of those parameters,” she requested. “What stands out in your mind that makes them different from the others, even if it’s just a hunch?”

“First off, they’re in a frequency range that is far above what we should have been able to receive,” the man answered. “All I can figure is that we picked up a of couple stray harmonic signatures.” He seemed puzzled by her questions.

“What else can you tell me?” she asked, stretching for that elusive thought just beyond her grasp. “How else are these particular signals different?”

“At first, I thought we’d picked up some sort of squirt transmission,” he replied. “The signals appeared to have the same rapid sequencing we use in our own equipment. But something seemed out of character. It was just wrong.”

“What do you mean it seemed out of character?” she asked, trying to ferret out just what it was that had led him to this conclusion. From what she had seen of the signal readouts, they appeared to be part of the normal background noise of the universe.

“Well, at first I thought we’d somehow picked up one of the regular squirt transmissions used by the military,” the technician said. “But then I noticed that its carrier signal was also speeded up. With our own squirt signals, the carrier is still identical to a regular time transmission. It’s only our information that is sped up. But with these signals, the whole thing is speeded up. Both the carrier wave and the signal imbedded with it were operating at a speed multiple far above what we use.”

“How much faster are they increased, and what effect would this have on a signal?” she asked carefully. An inability to focus the emerging idea, a stray thought could shut off the sliver of light she sensed among all this data.

“As to how they’re sped up, I’m not sure,” the technician answered. “But the affect I can easily project, although I don’t believe it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because to have a carrier go that fast it would have to exceed the speed of light,” the man answered hesitantly. “And such a signal would be able to transmit over hundreds of light years of space almost instantaneously and without signal degradation.” The woman scientist absorbed the information and considered it for a minute.

“I think we have found what we’re looking for,” she said quietly to the others around her. “Those signals are not natural occurrences, which implies that someone or something has deliberately created them. However they were made, these are the signals from whoever is out there.”