M'tak Ka'fek (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (14 page)

The sudden sprouting of a septuagenarian cyborg in front of him did not seem to faze the General, but it did leave him with little option but to shake TK's hand. To have refused would have looked churlish. “Major General Jacob Crotchet, commanding the 75
^th
Infantry Division, U.S. Army—or what's left of it.”

While he shook the General's hand, TK tilted his head to one side as if someone was whispering to him over his shoulder. He nodded once, straightened up and spoke to the General. “General we need to talk...”

“What the hell are those!” the General interrupted, leaning sideways to get a better look around TK. His eyes were no longer squinting. Outside, the two Marines that accompanied TK to Earth had exited the shuttle and were standing to either side of the craft at port arms.

“Them?” TK asked innocently. “The sudden appearance of your armed vehicles out there made my pilot a mite nervous so he asked a couple of the boys to step outside and give your fellers the once over.”

“They look like some kind of robot or something,” exclaimed President Stoltz.

“Shut. Up. Roger!” Sally hissed.

“Madre de Dios,” whispered Tony.

“I though you came unarmed, TK,” Sid said, speaking for the first time since the introductions were made.

“I am unarmed,” TK said, emphasizing the 'I', “something that you, Ranger, and you, General, are not.”

“I thought this was a peaceful mission,” Roger babbled.

“It is,” snapped TK, his patience worn thin, “but that there shuttle craft can fly from here to the Moon and back again. It's probably one of the most valuable pieces of equipment on the planet and there's no way we were gonna' risk some fool taken' it into his head to try and steal it.”

“I'm assuming those things are dangerous,” the General stated, not taking his eyes off the two Marines outside.

TK sighed. “Let me put it to you this way, General—did you ever see the movie 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' when you were a kid? I don't mean that crappy remake a decade or so ago, I mean the original black and white film from 1951.”

“Yeah, probably,” the General replied cautiously.

“It was all about a guy in a flying saucer who came to Earth on a peace mission—feller by the name of Klaatu. He came unarmed, like I did.”

“And?”

“Just in case things didn't go so well with the natives he had this big ol' metal feller with him—feller by the name of Gort. It was a big mistake to mess with Gort.”

“Your point is?”

“You can call me Klaatu,” TK smiled, “Them two out there, they're both Gorts.”

NatHanGon's Quarters, Farside

Melissa Scott Hamilton put in a quick appearance at the reception at Jesse's Place before going to check on her friend, the Triad ambassador. Melissa was really not much of a party girl and she found talking with the Ambassador more enjoyable than conversing with a collection of humans in varying states of inebriation.

NatHanGon's quarters were located near the agricultural production spaces, rather fitting in Melissa's mind considering that the triple brained alien was a plant. Down several infrequently traveled corridors, Melissa walked alone until she came to the locked portal that led to the Ambassador's chamber. She had not noticed the maintenance tech who followed her from the mostly darkened atrium.

The environmental conditions in the room that housed NatHanGon were designed to mimic the conditions found on their own world, Gliese 581d. From one wall issued red tinged light that extended into the near infrared, a close analog of the light from the planet's sun, a red dwarf called Gliese 581 by humans. When no one was visiting inside the 5 by 5 meter room, strong artificial winds gusted and rain pelted the interior. The atmospheric gas mixture also mimicked that of the planet and was kept at twice Earth sea-level pressure. To gain physical access to the Ambassador required passing through an airlock that equalized the pressure.

The base's head horticulturist was one of the few whose comm pip code allowed access to the airlock. Other guests visited the Ambassador from an adjacent room more comfortable for Earthlings. Since the Triads conversed using either radio waves or by direct electrical contact through their roots, it did not really matter that the alien was separated from their guests by a thick transparent wall. Conversation was possible because the base computer translated radio frequency transmissions to and from the Triad. Melissa, however, gladly suffered the added discomfort of entering into the Ambassador's physical presence.

The atmosphere inside the chamber was primarily nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The CO
₂
levels were significantly higher than on Earth, ten times as high in fact. Humans can be asphyxiated by sufficiently elevated CO
₂
levels, even in the presence of ample amounts of oxygen. In 1986, a release of gas from Lake Nyos in Cameroon killed more than 1700 people by driving the CO
₂
levels above 10%. While such levels can render a human unconscious in less than five minutes that danger did not exist at the 0.4% level present in the Ambassador's residence, even at twice normal atmospheric pressure.

There were concerns about long-term exposure, however, and frequent or lengthy visits required the use of a mask that selectively blocked carbon dioxide. Wearing a mask, Melissa stepped through the inner airlock door and greeted her friend.

“Hey, NatHanGon, how y’all doing today?” In this case “y'all” was totally appropriate, since the Ambassador possessed three quasi-independent brains linked through the roots at the creature's base. Or not, since in the deep south “y'all” is singular—a group of people was referred to as “all y'all” where Melissa came from.

“It is good to see you again Melissa; Have you details of your fleet's victory over the interlopers? Is there any news about your captain?”

The Ambassador did not really see Melissa, having no eyes, but rather sensed her presence through weak electrical fields. They did physically acknowledge the human's presence by gently shaking the black, flower like blooms that ran along the ribs of their two meter tall cactus like trunks—an action that humans interpreted as an expression of pleasure. The result was a sound like wind chimes or the tinkling of bells.

Conversing with a Triad could be quite confusing for a single brained creature, as each of the plant's brains provided an independent conversational thread. At first, human researchers thought that each thread belonged to one of the brains, but it was later revealed that they frequently migrated from one physical brain to another. The Triad mind was much more complicated than humans realized, as befit creatures that evolved before Earth had formed around the proto-star that became the Sun.

“It's good to see you too; The fleet and the Marines destroyed the alien ship that attacked our planet; There's been no word from Captain Jack, I'm sure Ludmilla would have said something if there had.”

Humans conversing with a Triad tended to adopt a three part conversational mode themselves. Multiple researchers often carried out three seemingly independent conversations with the Ambassador simultaneously. Melissa had gotten to the point where she could manage three threads by herself.

“We always enjoy your visits, it gets a bit lonely for us without a conclave to commune with; It is good that your forces were victorious, did they bring back any of the aliens alive? I'm sure the Captain is all right, the T'aafhal ship they are in is extraordinarily powerful.”

“I enjoy talkin' with y'all too, more so than with most folk; Evidently the aliens were all killed by the Marine assault, though they brought back some equipment that they think is a navigation computer and a couple of bodies for dissection; I sure hope so, Ludmilla would just die if something happened to him.”

Melissa pulled on a pair of gardener's gloves and got on her hands and knees to inspect the cover vegetation surrounding the Ambassador's roots. The mosses and low clinging plants had been brought along from the Triad planet to make NatHanGon's metal and glass room seem more like home.

* * * * *

Outside the airlock a man in gray maintenance coveralls retrieved the small electronic device he planted near the entrance to the Ambassador's chamber earlier. He had been studying the horticulturist's movements for several weeks and discovered that she often visited the alien plant at odd hours—times when there were no other people about. He checked the device and discovered that it had done its job.

He smiled to himself, feeling his excitement grow. Now was the perfect time. No one was down here wandering the halls, they were all at one of the bars getting drunk. He pressed the device's playback button and it reproduced the identification sequence transmitted earlier by Melissa's comm pip. The outer airlock door slid quietly aside.

Bridge, M'tak Ka'fek

The crew were all at their action stations, anticipating emergence from alter-space. Transiting alter-space was the first way humans had learned to effectively travel faster than light. Only a few short months ago it seemed like the ultimate in high-speed travel, taking only a few days to cross a score of light-years. But since the M'tak Ka'fek had taken them 1,500 light-years from home in the course of a few moments by generating an annular singularity—a made to order wormhole—passing through the lesser dimensions of alter-space seemed a plodding pace. Unfortunately, the faster mode of travel was energy intensive and until a new supply of antimatter could be secured, alter-space transit was the best the ship could do.

Bear was at the main weapon station and JT at navigation. Sandy McKinnett and Bobby Danner manned the helm with Mizuki Ogawa keeping track of things astrophysical. The rest of the crew and Marines stood ready at weapon stations farther aft. Keeping track of everything, Captain Jack sat in the commander's chair, which he had relocated from its original, lonely position in front of the bridge to a more comfortable location behind the helm.

I hope there is something waiting for us on the other end of this transit,
Jack thought.
Even doing alter-space transits will eventually deplete our antimatter supplies, then we will truly be up a creek without a paddle.
 

An interesting analogy,
the ship's AI commented wordlessly.

“Emergence in 10 seconds, Captain,” called Mizuki from the helm. The T'aafhal instruments were much better at calculating the time of a transit than the humans' best efforts.

“I'm already getting sensor data from the system ahead, Captain,” reported Bear. The ability of the polar bears to 'smell' things in alter-space was amazing even to the AI. The part of a bear's brain that provided its exquisite sense of smell—capable of detecting a seal beneath Arctic ice at a dozen kilometers—adapted to the T'aafhal targeting sensors as though designed for the job, which in fact it had been.

The reality of 3-space shimmered into existence around the ship. The crew intently surveyed the system before them, straining to pickup a hint of an enemy through senses enhance by the M'tak Ka'fek's multitude of instruments.

“The prey is headed across the system,” Bear reported, “About an AU away.”

Running a standard survey of the system, JT cataloged the star and its planets. “Looks like a single star system, a marginal class A, 1.6 solar masses. A couple of rocky planets, both under an AU out, no atmospheres and way too hot for any know lifeforms. And then there is this...”

JT sent an image to the forward display. There, hanging in space in front of the bridge crew, was a space station. Though the scale was impossible to judge without something familiar to compare it to, the station appeared to consist of six large domed units arranged in a hexagon. The clear, shallow domes covered glittering black structures, all facing the blue-white star. As the image expanded it became clear that the six domed structures were like covered saucers, connected from behind by a framework of ribbed struts.

Each of the saucers was roughly 32 kilometers in diameter, with the spacing between their edges half that. From the centers of their backsides, stems a kilometer in diameter extended downward for five kilometers. At four kilometers lateral struts of similar diameter ran to the center of the array, where they joined with a thicker stem that extended at least 25 kilometers into space behind the structure. The overall effect was of a gigantic cluster of flowers suspended in space, crafted in a style that was disturbingly familiar.

“That looks like it was built by whoever made the Space Mushroom at Comae Berenices,” Bobby said in a hesitant voice.

“Right the first time, Bobby,” JT confirmed, looking up. “Except each of those domes is about 60% bigger than the cap on the Space Mushroom.”

“And there are six of them,” Bear said, stating the obvious. “Which means that is a much bigger station than the one we destroyed.”

“Which means it should have an even larger store of antimatter than that station,” the Captain finished, leaning forward in his chair. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to requisition some of it.”

“Captain,” the ship said, “the station ahead appears to be broadcasting approach and docking instructions on a number of frequencies. There are several languages being used, all derivatives of the ancient trading language.”

“Gun crews at the ready,” Jack ordered. “Well let's not disappoint them—follow the docking instructions, Mr. Danner. Let's go see who's minding the store.” 

Chapter 8

NatHanGon's Quarters, Farside

Hearing the airlock door open behind her, Melissa stood up and faced the stranger as he entered. “Who are you?” she asked, puzzled how someone she did not know had gained access to the Ambassador's living space. “What do you want?”

The intruder advanced on her with a smirk on his face. “I want you, bitch,” he said, voice flat and malevolent. He lunged for Melissa and tried to grab her throat with both hands.