Talosian Chronicles 2: Star Dancer (3 page)

“I’m on the schedule for close-in patrol and CAP later tonight. Would any of you be willing to take my next two duty rotations?” Talena said and bit her lower lip.

Surprising Talena, the whole squadron stood.

“I think you have your answer, Leftenant,” Major Brighton said. “With your permission, as well as the rest of the squadron, I’ll make sure the rotations get covered in such a way as to see that no one gets over-burdened. You need to go take care of our lady.”

Seeing the happy agreement of the squadron, Talena hugged Major Brighton. “Thank you!” She turned back to the room. “Thank you everyone!”

“I’ll go start replicating the cigars for you, Sir!” Major Harris said, smiling.

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I
an and Talena arrived back at med bay and Talena was smiling.

“I take it everything went well with the pilots?” Jenny asked.

“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if flowers and other junk don’t start showing up soon! John Harris said he’d get busy getting the cigars replicated!” Ian said chuckling.

Flowers, teddy bears and everything you could think of began arriving at medbay as well as at Ian and family’s quarters. Star told Ian that the entire ship was aware of the births of Joshua Michael and Angela Jean Williams.

The official birth announcement was in the small community newspaper along with the winner of the ‘baby-pool’. Emily Conlith, the youngest daughter of one of the construction people, won a six-foot-tall teddy bear. The whole thing had been organized by Janet Laskar’s office and there were pools on Beth and Jenny’s upcoming dates as well.

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I
an was in his ready room reading reports on some of the new innovations completed by the research teams. There were a few new weapons systems, as well as upgrades to existing ones. In addition to weapons technology, there had also been a great deal of research done on underwater housing as well as millions of ways to clean up the planet while eliminating solid waste in an environmentally responsible way.

In with that report was a note that Doctor Amal Punjab would like to speak with Ian as soon as would be possible. Ian could almost hear the Indian accent through the note, and smiled at it.

Construction was still underway on the moon base, even though there had been large portions of the base already completed, it still wasn’t ready for prime time yet. Only one of the huge residence modules had been finished, as well as the main connecting hub of the base. The small administration area had been completed, as well as the medical area, but the first research area was only about half completed.

After the research area gets finished, the next item was for a very large, mostly automated assembly and fabrication area for building the small agile fighter craft that
Star Dancer
carried, which would be used for defending the solar system from attack.

The construction drones were amazingly fast workers, but even with them working continuously, the research area would still not be ready for another week, and the fighter assembly area would take another month. Of course, not all the drones would be working on a single project; the assembly area had already been started and was progressing, but for now the main focus was on the research area. Once that was completed, some of the drones would switch over to building another residence unit, then another research area, and then more residences for the flight school would be built near the small space port.

Ian asked to be connected with Doctor Punjab and was surprised when his wife answered the comm. “Doctor Punjab’s office, how can I help you?” When she saw who it was, her smile brightened considerable. “Commander Ian! How nice of you to call! What can I do for you today? She asked again in her excitement.

“Good Morning Alba, I got a note that Amal wanted to speak with me, is he in?” Ian asked.

Alba nodded. “Yes he is, he has been going over some of the engineering reports for the construction project here. I’ll let him know you are calling.”

“Thank you,” Ian said grinning at the woman.

Very shortly the smiling face of a greying, elderly Indian gentleman came on the screen. “Commander Ian! Thank you for contacting me so quickly! I only sent that note this morning!”

“It’s not a problem, Doctor. What did you need to speak to me about?” Ian asked.

Amal Punjab seemed to deflate on himself for a moment. “I am afraid I may have made a mistake in accepting this position without thinking it through more completely. I am fearful that I will not be able to perform all the duties that will be required of me.”

“What duties would those be, Doctor? I don’t understand? Has something changed?” Ian asked.

“No, nothing has changed, Commander. I did not stop to think that part of the duties of my office would be the authorization for the building of weapons. I am afraid I cannot do that. I abhor violence of that nature. I have spoken of this with Alba, and we can see no way around this impasse,” Amal said sadly. “I am truly sorry to be letting you down in this manner.”

The light dawned for Ian as he realized that Amal and Alba were both devout Hindus, and that their religion did not condone violence of any kind.

“Doctor, you and Alba have not let me down at all, I’m afraid it was I that let you down. I should have known that the weapons section of the base would go against your ethics and beliefs, and made allowances for it. Don’t feel badly about this, it isn’t your fault.” He said thinking quickly. “Doctor, is there any other part of the base or your duties that would violate your beliefs?”

“Just the military flight school, and I was lead to believe that would have its own commander and only require support from us,’ the Doctor replied.

“That’s correct, you shouldn’t have to worry about that at all. I would very much like you to stay on there and be the administrator as we discussed earlier, so why don’t we find someone else to handle the weapons facility for you?” Ian suggested.

“You would do that for us?” Amal asked.

“Doctor, from everything I’ve seen so far, you are the perfect person to be in the position you now have. The failure to see the issue you would have with the weapons area was mine, not yours, so if you would consider it, please stay and continue as you have been, and I will speak to Janet Laskar about finding a person to handle the weapons and military portions of the base. Would that be satisfactory?”

“That would be very satisfactory, Commander! Both Alba and I very much like the situation we now find ourselves in. I was dreading speaking to you about this because of that, however, I knew I had to in order for the project to proceed through to fruition,” the man replied.

“In case it takes a little while, would it be acceptable for you to continue supervising the construction until we can get a military liaison officer for you?” Ian asked.

“That should be fine, Commander. As long as no weapons get made under my authorization, I feel my conscience will be clear,” Amal replied.

“Okay, I’ll get right on finding the officer then. Of course, knowing Janet, she probably already knows and has someone picked out!” Ian said grinning.

“She does seem to have an uncanny ability to know what’s going on. If I weren’t so busy, it would be an interesting subject to research,” Amal replied, obviously relieved now.

“I will let you back to work then, Doctor. Good Morning,” Ian said.

“And to you, Commander. Thank you.” Amal said as his smiling face faded from the screen.

As Ian was about to ask for Janet, the door chimed a visitor. Ian grinned and called ‘open’.

Just as he thought, Janet Laskar walked through the door, however, she wasn’t smiling. “Ian, I think we might have a problem.”

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M
any light years away...

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Q
uilcab strode purposefully into the control center. Looking out of the large windows into the bay, it saw the slaves scurrying around to get the big ship loaded as quickly as possible.

“Report,” it commanded.

“We are slightly ahead of schedule getting the ship loaded. However, this load will all but deplete the raw ore we have stockpiled from our mines. We...”

“I know all that, subnick! What of the message I sent to Command? What is their reply?” Quilcab said shortly, it really hated it when its questions didn’t get answered.

“There has been no reply to your message, Sire,” the underling replied. “However, I can confirm that it has been received by the Council.”

“That makes no sense. We have confirmed sightings of Talosian ships operating in this system, yet Command does nothing about it? What are we supposed to do if they discover the shipments? One of these ships could lead an alliance fleet to our exile!” Quilcab said to itself. “What kind of game are they playing at? If we lose this planet, we lose the last food producing planet we have.”

The underlings in the Command center knew better then to answer their superior; the blood stains were still on the wall from the last time someone did.

“Tell my agents on the surface to get us more slaves for the mines. Destroy our current overseers and implant new ones, these are getting too violent and are damaging too many workers. Where is the Captain of that ship?”

“I believe it is in the pleasure center, Sire,” the underling replied. “Do you have new orders for the team investigating the human community in New Mexico?”

“No, they have their orders. If they cannot carry them out, I will find someone who can, now get back to work and quit gawking at me.”

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F
.S.S.
Star Dancer.

Selene Orbit, (Earth’s moon)

Earth, Sol Sector.

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“W
hat’s wrong Janet?” Ian asked as the woman took a seat. Ian quickly got her a cup of tea.

“Do you have anything stronger Ian?” she asked, surprising him.

“Do you want Coffee? It’s a little earlier for alcohol,” he replied.

“Yeah, I meant I’ll have one of those things you drink all the time. Maybe the caffeine kick will help me clear my head,” Janet said. “The vision I had was pretty fuzzy, and I couldn’t make out much detail. I know I saw a huge ship, and the planet was really banged up. The moon had been hammered. I know it was the Caldarians because I could see them, but not much else was clear.”

“Do you know when this is going to happen?” Ian asked.

She shook her head. “No, but it has to be out a ways, I mean at least a month in the future.

Otherwise, I would have seen things clearer.”

“Do you know I was about to call you just before you rang the bell?” Ian asked trying to distract her.

Janet nodded. “Ash Borhiem will be the new liaison officer for the moon base. He’s supposed to arrive at Talos tonight. I would have had him here sooner, but I had a hard time finding him.”

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Ian said.

Janet chuckled at him. “Thanks, but just remember, I don’t see everything before it happens.”

“There, I got you to smile. Did you get much detail of the ship? That way, we’ll know what we’re going to be up against?” Ian asked.

“Not really, no. I know it was big, bigger than
Star Dancer
, but I don’t know how much bigger. I can tell you they plan on taking over openly and enslaving the entire planet. We weren’t in the picture, but from the looks of the moon, the moon base was utterly destroyed – there were actual pieces of the moon broken off and floating there, it was scary as hell,” Janet said.

“But it was mostly fuzzy, so that means it’s either too far in the future or we can change the way it happens, right?” Ian asked.

Janet nodded. “It means that there are still too many variables that can influence it. Basically, the same thing you said, but I think time has less to do with it.”

Ian nodded. “Well, you warned me, so I’ll do my best to make sure we have what we need to defend ourselves. As this gets clearer or if it changes, please let me know right away?”

“You can count on that, Ian,” she said. “I just wish that someone else would get these dooms-day visions. They are seriously unnerving.”

“I can only imagine. Do you know how your husband is coming along on the new AI for the moon base?” Ian asked.

“I’m not sure, he’s been pretty quiet about that project,” Janet said. “I think he’s afraid of what happened earlier. I do know it’s been taking up a lot of his time.”

“Okay, I’ll call and talk to him about it. If what you’re telling me is correct, we’re going to need it fairly soon.”

Janet rose from her seat. “Well, I warned you, and you asked for the liaison officer, so I think we both should get back to work. Take care, Ian.”

“You too, Janet. With luck, now that you’ve told me about it, the dreams will slack off a bit,” Ian countered as he too rose to see her to the door.

Janet nodded. “That does work sometimes. I’ll just have to see what happens. I’m just really glad Jenny isn’t getting these images. She’s too close to giving birth to be stressed like this.”

“I can definitely agree with you on that. I think if she and Beth get any bigger they may go on strike soon!” Ian said, grinning.

“Are they still working?” Janet asked as the door opened to let her out.

“Sort of, I released them from duty, but you know those two. Beth still goes to her office, and Jenny will come to the bridge to do research on her projects,” Ian explained.

Janet shook her head as she walked away, Ian’s grin faded quickly as his doors closed. He had managed to keep his panic from showing in front of Janet, but now that he was alone was another matter. Sitting back down at his desk, he took a moment to stop his hands from shaking, before he started making calls.

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S
ecurity Control,

Talos, New Mexico.

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“C
aptain Anders, sensors are registering the approach of several low-altitude helicopters. They have not passed our boundary, but if they continue on their current track, they will be here in about four-five minutes,” Corporal Powell said over the comm. Powell was one of the former construction workers that had been interested in becoming a Marine. Tonight, he was pulling duty in the security center.