Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) (16 page)

It’s no wonder they want to escape such a place
, Piaffè thought.
But why can’t they be civil about it
?

Despite their efforts to remain undetected, the Jibbah ships were soon discovered by the Red-tails. The observation ships were destroyed or abandoned before the terrible onslaught of the red invaders. Only a few Horicon probes remained undetected to carry on further observation of the menace.

But the effort to remain hidden failed the little wanderers. Red-tail science soon discovered the transit tubes the Jibbah had used to travel between galaxies. Horicon probes were also captured and reverse-engineered by the Red-tails eagerly seeking their secrets. And that was how the enemy discovered the means to change and manipulate the natural transit tubes for their own purposes.

Using their purloined technology, the red menace soon began to raid the space around their own solar system. Then they began terrorizing and conquering their own galaxy. It wasn’t long before the Red-tail onslaught leeched out past their own galactic borders.

The only hindrance on their conquering march was the limitations of the transit tubes themselves. Forcing them open enough to slip fleets through caused them to collapse or shorten considerably, so only short jumps were possible, slowing the expansion of their hunting fields.

The trend of expansion and raiding by the Red-tails soon became obvious. It was only a matter of time before they discovered how to enter the home galaxies of both the Jibbah and the Horicon. Back on Horicon and on the home worlds of the Jibbah, a new contest developed—a contest to hide and protect themselves from the menace they’d unleashed on an unsuspecting universe.

Bravely monitoring his equipment, Piaffè continued to watch the emerging Red-tail fleet. By historical standards, it was smaller than usual but that did little to lessen the threat they posed here in this galaxy. Following the instructions from the mysterious Horicon, Piaffè carefully recorded every bit of information his sensors could gather.

Unaware that they were being observed, the Red-tail cluster reformed and headed off toward the many worlds now occupied by the bipedal creatures. They were long gone from his most sensitive sensors before Piaffè allowed himself to relax.

Turning to his communications equipment, the little Jibbah sent a squirt transmission of his observations to the hidden Horicon. As he hit the send switch, Piaffè fervently hoped that the ancient Horicon relays would be up to the task.

∞∞∞

“So this is what it’s like in one of these ships!” Sony exclaimed as the
Cahill Express
shot up through the atmosphere of Vogel. “Quite different from the interceptors. No inertia.”

Sitting in his control seat, Ian scanned his instruments and smiled. He never ceased to marvel at the thrill people expressed on their first trip into space. Didn’t they understand that space is an unforgiving tyrant capable of snatching the life out of them if given the chance? Were they naïve as to believe the enemy they’d captured wouldn’t spend its last breath destroying them?

Below them, they could see the rapidly dwindling surface of the planet.

“We’re approaching the Optiveil,” Ian said to both Lyyle and the crew on the surface below.

“Acknowledged,” Lyyle said from the control center where he was monitoring the test run. “How’s your power level?”

“Unaffected so far.”

There had been considerable conjecture about how the dampening field of the Optiveil around Vogel would affect the flight systems of a ship leaving the planet. After all the arguments were finished and all the designers had given their opinions, there remained only one way to find out - try it. Since it was his ship, much to his consternation, the final decision was his. It seemed all the decisions lately had landed in his lap.

Lyyle wanted to try it with the dampening aspect of the Optiveil turned off but Ian had vetoed that. By trying the flight with the Optiveil operational, they would be duplicating Ian’s arrival in reverse. The value of the comparative data was obvious to everyone.

So the test flight was scheduled. Sony would accompany Ian to monitor the extra recording instruments installed on the
Express
. Lyyle would monitor from the surface and keep an open relay to the trader’s ship. As an additional precaution, the tractor rays were standing by in case the
Express
became disabled and required retrieval.

Ian noticed the shimmering effect of the underside of the Optiveil and slowed the
Express
accordingly. Sony scanned his equipment and gave the nod to proceed.

“Intersecting the Optiveil,” Ian announced as the ship pierced the lower zone of the invisibility shield.

In less than a second Vogel disappeared, replaced by the blackness of space. Ian heard a gasp from Sony. “I never imagined...” he said, his voice fading away. Ian glanced over and noticed the man shake himself and return to checking his equipment.

“Do you read me,
Cahill Express
?” Lyyle’s voice squawked from the speaker.

“Loud and clear,” Ian responded as he brought the
Express
to a stop.

A quick habitual scan of his detection equipment showed they were alone in space. The last thing he wanted right now was to deal with a Red-tail. The thought made him wonder about the team dissecting the Red-tail ship below.

“Lyyle?” he said, keying his mic.

“Yes?”

“Tell those people to keep a dampening field on that Red-tail ship while they work. We don’t need some sort of destruct system blowing up unexpectedly.”

“Already on it,” Lyyle replied. “And from what they’re telling us, the navigation recorder should be safely out by the time you get back.”

“Good,” Ian said. “I want to see where he’s been recently. It could tell us a thing or two.”

Lyyle agreed. “Are you ready to try re-entry with the ship system on?” Ian again looked over at Sony who gave the thumbs up.

“We’re ready here,” Ian said. “Turning the on Optiveil in five seconds.”

“Watching you now,” Lyyle said while he eyed the large detector screen below. “We see you big and beautiful.”

“Optiveil activating... now!” Ian said with a flip of a switch.

Checking both his instruments and looking outside, Ian could see no change. Except for the indicator lights, he couldn’t tell if the Optiveil was working or not.

“Everything is working over here,” Sony said as if in response to Ian’s unasked question.

“Where’d you go?” squawked Lyyle’s voice over the speaker. “We had you visually and with detectors and then you just blinked out.”

“Oh, we’re still here,” Ian reassured him with a grin. “Any sign of distortion?”

“None whatsoever,” Lyyle answered. “We’re going to try to find you with one of the tractor rays. Standby.” Ian and Sony felt a nudging of the ship but nothing definite.

“Just felt a light tremor,” Ian reported.

“Didn’t get a thing here,” Lyyle said. “Even tried an intersecting of two vectors and found nothing.”

“I think we’ve got a winner!” Ian said, the excitement in his voice unmistakable.
I’m gonna make a fortune with this thing.
“Ready to try interaction with the main field?”

“Go ahead,” Lyyle acknowledged. “Watching your original flight path for any disturbance.”

“Coming up on the main field now,” Ian announced as he slowly edged the
Express
closer to the planet. Out through the front windows, he saw a sparkle resembling a static discharge. Then it was gone and they were under the main veil.

“Got a shimmer of something,” Lyyle said over the comm. “But we wouldn’t have seen it if we hadn’t been looking at the precise point of entry. Then it and you were both gone. Any problems with the dampening field?”

“None,” Ian replied. “There is a slightly larger power draw by the Optiveil, but that’s it.”

“I got it all here,” Sony announced from his station.

“I heard that,” Lyyle said. “Come on down and we’ll let the experts go over this data. In the meantime, they’ve got that new nav system waiting for you.”

Chapter Fourteen

This is a puzzle.

Professor Angle leaned back from where he’d labored over the ancient text and he tried to rub the fatigue from his eyes.
This is becoming a bad habit,
he thought as he glanced at the wall chronometer.

Ert was also puzzling over something. The ship he’d been tracking earlier had disappeared completely. No wreckage, no battles noted, no distress call. The ship had simply vanished in an, according to human records, unexplored area of the galaxy.

Accessing files from his own memory banks, Ert compared their data with that of the humans now populating the galaxy. He noted several planets reported either missing or now marked as destroyed. Ert’s files showed them to be lush habitable worlds but that had been several hundred years ago.

Perusing the human records, Ert noted markers indicating debris fields where a number of the planets had been. That was as it should be. If they’d been destroyed, it followed that there would be evidence.

But then he noted a disturbing discrepancy. One planet was missing but there was no evidence of its destruction. No rocky debris occupied its former orbit either. The planet was just gone. Correlating this information with what he had earlier observed concerning that missing ship brought up an interesting fact—both were in the same sector of space.

Ert was puzzled by this so he set a sub-section of his central processor to ferret out any pertinent data, present or ancient, that could shed even a glimmer of light on the dilemma.

Leaving the subroutine to do its work, Ert looked around for something to do. Noticing the professor still at his desk, and though it was very late, Ert decided to intrude.

“Good evening, Professor,” Ert said through an audio circuit. The professor looked around as if he suspected these few minutes of uninterrupted privacy were too good to be true.

“And how are you my fine mechanical friend?” the professor asked.

“Doing well,” Ert answered. “What are you studying so late tonight?”

“I’m going over these old texts that a friend sent to me.”

“What do you find so interesting about them?”

“Well for one thing, they’re written in Horicon,” Professor Angle answered. “They detail the history of a dead planet of humans.”

“I was not aware of such an occurrence.” The professor’s statement surprised Ert. He had no record of humans and Horicons ever interacting, at least, not until now.

“I was under the impression the Horicon and humanity never interacted with each other.”

“I studied that,” Ert answered. “The only conclusion is the first human expansion happened so rapidly that much of the galaxy was overlooked. Not to mention the fact that the Horicon were trying to stay secluded.”

“But how do you explain this book from an extinct human civilization being written in Horicon?”

Ert didn’t answer, which caused the professor to open his eyes and lean forward onto his desk. Had he asked a question the computer could not answer? Or was something else going on that he wasn’t aware of.

“Ert?” the professor asked. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, Professor, I’m still here.”

“Did the extinction of these people have something to do with Red-tails?” the professor asked.

Angle thought he heard what sounded like a sigh emit from his console speaker. Had he touched on a subject the computer wasn’t comfortable discussing? Was there more to this story than the text revealed?

“Yes, it did,” Ert confessed. “At least that was the official policy. I have tried to fill in the gaps but much is still pure conjecture.”

“That’s too bad,” Professor Angle admitted. “It might even help our understanding of this lost branch of humanity since this text appears to be a history of their civilization.”

“Would you like for me to correlate that text with my own records?” Ert asked. “It is curious they recorded their history in my own native language. I know of no crossover between the Horicon and humans with the exception of myself.”

The professor agreed. “But I haven’t converted this text to an electronic file yet.”

“Just place it in the book recorder,” Ert said. “I can manipulate the page turning function if you set it all up for me.”

“Only if you make a copy for me and don’t get into any trouble in the process.”

“Of course, my friend,” Ert answered as the professor got up and carried the heavy text to the auto-reader. “But it depends on your definition of the word ‘trouble’, doesn’t it?”

“You know what I mean!” the professor shot back when he’d finished setting up the text. “Go ahead and test it.” The pages started turning under Ert’s direction.

“It works fine,” Ert reported. “This should take about two hours. The only problem will be when I finish this text and want to move on to the next in your collection.”

 “I’ll have someone come in every two hours and change texts if you’d like,” Professor Angle said. “I just won’t tell them that it’s you doing the research.”

The professor took a moment and logged his request onto the message board for the night staff. He knew Earl Neswed would have something to say about his staff doing this in addition to their other duties, but Earl owed the professor a favor or two.

“Thank you, Professor. I’ll have your copy ready in the morning.”

“And let me know what you discover about how the Red-tails conquered that planet,” the professor added as an after-thought. “It could be key to learning how they came to be in our galaxy in the first place.”

∞∞∞

Ian Cahill was having thoughts of his own about Red-tails. In front of him on the workbench of the
Cahill Express
was the navigation module from the captured Red-tail ship. Through use of test leads and jumper wires, Lyyle and Sony hooked it up to an isolated bench monitor. Sony had suggested using the
Expresses
own navigational system to interface with the alien device but Ian did not want to risk it. The chance of damaging his flight records was too great a risk in this unknown sector. To be on the safe side, they also tapped in a recording device.